Santiago Abascal divides Hortaleza, a working-class neighborhood stressed by the menas

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"I've been going out these streets at night and going home alone for years and nothing has ever happened to me. This is like a town, everybody knows each other. He will have his bad things, like everything else, but Abascal can't come here to say what he said. I’m very ashamed that he’s from the neighborhood. " This is Cecilia Gómez , a 27-year-old nurse's aide and neighbor of the Hortaleza district of Madrid.

He has neighborhood pride and class pride. She and her brother were born here, like her father. His grandfather was one of the workers who, 70 years ago, built the town of Canillas and, in return, received a home. "I have studied at the Cabrini school with fellow immigrants and I have never had any problems. They are still my friends," he says as he drinks a beer at the Fresno brewery.

A few meters further, in the pharmacy, the apothecary Isabel Rodríguez disagrees: "It is a very insecure neighborhood. A year and a half ago a colleague took her bag and threw it on the floor. The problem is the children of the center of minors" .

The district is in the spotlight because Santiago Abascal said Monday in the electoral debate: "I live in a popular neighborhood of Madrid, Hortaleza, and every time I go out, and there is a center of ores, I find myself with women who come to tell me that the police tell them not to go out with jewelry to the street, with mothers worried that their daughters arrive at night and are afraid of being assaulted. "

I've been coming home alone for eight years and nothing has ever happened to me

Vox leaders had already tried to campaign with unaccompanied foreign minors - the men. Even with ex-professed visits, such as Rocío Monasterio on Monday at the doors of a center in Seville to report problems that the Board later denied. But Abascal made the qualitative leap by converting Hortaleza, before millions of spectators, into an emblem of his message against immigration with the popular classes as his objective.

For some time now, Vox has reinforced immigration as one of the central axes of its argument, in the manner of the European extreme right parties, moving the focus of Ceuta, Melilla and El Ejido (Almería) to the neighborhoods of the Big cities where there are ores. That is where Hortaleza has become the Vox laboratory to make its most powerful discourse against immigration among the working population. Using insecurity problems for this. And claiming as a neighbor, although he lives in a block of flats that moves away from the original spirit of a neighborhood with a strong associative fabric and a majority of the left - the same scenario that the extreme right looks for in Italy and in France. Hortaleza voted socialist on 28-A, except in the buildings in front of the center for minors, where the PP won.

What Abascal says is true and we have denounced it many times

In this district, with a 9% foreign population, contrasts predominate. The modest houses without elevator of Pinar del Rey have little to do with the villas where the students of the French Lyceum live. This polarization also translates to political opinions. A part of the neighbors rejects the stigma imposed by Abascal, while another part applauds him and affirms that "it falls short". The neighborhood, stressed for months by the ores, is now divided at the words of the president of Vox.

The neighbors of the Verona building on Valdetorres de Jarama street, for example, have sent letters to the Community of Madrid about the problems that have occurred in recent months in the first reception center of Hortaleza, where 91 live today ores In April, one of the inmates stabbed another in the thigh and two educators were injured while trying to mediate.

In June 2018, there was a full monograph to address the problem and the Police admit that the conflict has increased. "What Abascal says is true and we have denounced it many times. I am afraid to go alone in the Clara Eugenia park because there are many ores. For the record, I have nothing against them, I have given them money for breakfast. They are teenagers. that they are not to blame, it is a problem of the management of the center, "says CT , who asks that his name does not come out - like other neighbors -" because they can look for us in the mailbox and do something to us ". Many do not report for fear of reprisals.

What he says is true, and even falls short. I'm scared

At his side is JY , who has been in Hortaleza since 1978. "This is a middle class neighborhood that has always been quiet except in this area for the host boys. The last thing was 10 days ago, when a pitched battle with Latinos. They came in 30 or 40 hooded with baseball bats and chased each other. " It was witnessed by C. O. with his granddaughter.

"We have a permanent feeling of fear," he says. A permanent feeling of grievance floats in the environment, which prompted the popular classes to follow Marine Le Pen in France. "You have to take measures so that these people go somewhere else," says DS Fear. Indignation. And discomfort

"It is exaggerating a lot," says photographer Ángel Sánchez , 63, on the other side. "For four or five scoundrels, you can't afford a whole neighborhood. My daughter is a volunteer at an integration center and you can't imagine the fantastic things they have done." It refers to the Olivar, which has been serving immigrants for 30 years and now picks up many of those who, when they turn 18, leave the center of Hortaleza.

"The simple answers are dangerous," explains the president of the association, José Miguel Aragón . "It is a fact that there are kids there and that there are problems, but the underlying problem is of neglect, lack of resources and saturation. As soon as they have the slightest prospect of the future, the boys move forward," says this teacher, influencing in which the focus is education and give them expectations.

When I heard it, I cried directly. It affects a lot

Juan , another neighbor, sees it "difficult" to stop the speech of Vox because the neighbors have lived very hard realities with the heroine in the 80s and have become strong. He is very angry that Abascal has "launched with us" a speech "anti-immigration": "I, when I heard it, cried directly. It affects a lot."

The problem is that Vox speeches have consequences. Up to seven associations have asked the Prosecutor to investigate the formation of the radical right for a possible crime of incitement to hate. At the same time, neighborhood groups have reported attacks on ore centers by parties of extreme right groups.

In the center of minors of Hortaleza live boys like A. , who is 16 years old and recognizes that he does not know how to write his name, although he has already been in Spain for two and a half years. He arrived from Algeria hidden in the bottom of a truck. "There are good people here and bad people, we are not all the same," he reflects. And he starts to inhale glue at the center door.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

• Vox
• Marine Le Pen
• Melilla
• Rocío Monasterio
• Almeria
• Ceuta
• Santiago Abascal Count
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