There are phrases that act like a spell: they are cast as doubt and are accepted as a sentence. Cicero knew this when, in 63 BC. C., begins his attack on Catiline with “How long, Catiline, will you abuse our patience?” Centuries later, Shakespeare would take this process to Julius Caesar: Mark Antony repeated that Brutus was “an honorable man” while listing many facts that undermined the alleged honor.
The spell of José Luis Martínez-Almeida Navasquis, member of the Popular Party and mayor of Madrid since June 2019, has adopted the same magic trick: the mayor requests a census to find out how many people sleep in Sol because, presumably, there are more shops than people. In passing, he assured us that we all know they are nothing more than “four cats”. That “everyone” includes us in the gesture. However, what data do you have to confirm this?
A city with commissions, maps and newspapers. There is more to the organization than the word “camping” inside the plaza. Alejandro T., a 32-year-old psychologist already called the camp’s cartographer, began to freely draw a map to control the chaos of the first day.
The plan has acquired, as he admits, a life of its own. He arrived on September 28, set up shop and drew in his notebook as a hobby. Today he is part of the Urban Planning Commission, which decides where each new store goes to maintain free passage and emergency access and which, according to itself, manages the free stores: it assigns them to vulnerable people or people without stores and makes room for those who come with them.
As described by El Pais, on October 10 the three districts of that city (Fuente, Centro and Ballena) had their own assemblies, 62 squares and 56 streets, as well as construction, culture, mediation, communications, cleaning and care commissions. It even has its own newspaper: La Lona, a sort of magazine-fanzine that distributes insider news, texts and drawings. Its editor, Sergio, said that the third issue brought in a circulation of 150 copies.
Statistics do not match. The confusion starts from here. EFE reported 1,000 people in about 500 shops on 30 September. On the same day, the Tenants Union counted 1,248 shops. An internal count collected by Cadena SER later reached 1,283, and ten days later El Pais reported around 1,800. These are different estimates, not a comparable daily census. Almeida, meanwhile, went so far as to say that the only thing representing the majority of campers is the tent, not the people.
Shops certainly go up, but counting people is trickier. Do you add children? EFE spoke to hundreds of people this Sunday, and COPE counted more than a thousand stores and barely twenty people having breakfast. Police unions offer their own version: SEP assures, in the same COPE data, that many stores are empty at night and some are used by homeless people, and Zupol maintains that more than half go home to sleep. They are part sources, and are not equivalent to a recalculation.
The gap between “hundreds of people” and about 1,800 stores fueled the mayor’s skepticism, and that’s why a serious count would be useful for everyone. But it’s also because “four cats” sounds as false as “we have thousands.”
And what are they doing there? The question is valid, and even more so when some of those who are there are, at first glance, quite young. The camp was born on the night of September 26 after a protest called by the tenants’ union to evict Marycarmen, an 87-year-old woman. Since then, the union has been no longer involved since Oct. 2, and more than 40 groups have set up camp today, which helps explain why the message seems more widespread than it initially was.
There are versions about his profession. Some campers say they work, telecommute or study and return to square one after fulfilling their obligations. On the other hand, a viral video asking four campers about their occupations has been used to say just the opposite. Other media called for evictions in their own voice, calling some of the tenants in these temporary cities “sluts.” The four answers prove nothing, neither for nor against.
Sun, off. The community ordered the closure of the Seoul Metro station after complaints of urine and excrement accumulating in wells and ventilation accesses. The camp denies this: its cleanliness commission ensures that the camp is clean and they constantly manage the problem. In the same news, the Metro Works Council denied requests for closures due to unsanitary conditions and Renfe said it had not detected problems at Sarkanius station, which remained open. The transport unions also added that they were not given the measure.
The metro reopened on Saturday night after verifying with the results of the analysis, the safety and health conditions have been restored and, according to the community, the station was closed for 34 hours, 14 of them only to clean the ventilation shafts. Without data signed by both parties, each tells the story in its own way. And associations of disabled people said they could not move around the square.
The solution. Counting night and with witnesses like marriage. The arrival is expected to be much lower than in September. The Tenants’ Union has already confirmed that, for example, the camping in Las Setas de Sevilla has already been extinguished. In the latest Elmundo report, several campers in “about 2,000 tents” complained about the lack of people in the committee and certain wear and tear: “Deterioration is noticeable after a few weeks, because camping is tiring.”
In any case, the march has not yet been planned and the count is the only thing that will break both the “four cats” and the “thousands of us”. Until then, stores, people and opinions will continue to disagree and create a sterile debate.
Picture | Zarateman for Wikimedia Commons
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