ANA DEL BARRIO
Madrid
Updated Sunday, 20June2021-01: 09
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On the ground floor of Aurrerá, rockers and mods threw bottles and
whipped each other with belts with eagle buckles,
imitating the mythical fights of the city of Brighton, reflected in the movie Quadrophenia.
In the Rock-Ola room, the first punks and skins danced and
took drugs together to the rhythm of the music
, far from the enmity that would later reign between their tribes.
In the town of Las Barranquillas, junkies lined up to wait for their papers, under
the watchful eye of a monkey with a dog collar
, who watched each and every one of their movements, in the shack of Los Gordos.
They are scenes from that Madrid of the 70s, 80s and 90s, which was populated by
the figure of the neighborhood pimp
, that hustler who lived from day to day, always on the edge of marginality and who today is on the way to extinction.
Cool by nature, the pimp reigned in Madrid's parks and squares because his natural habitat was the street and he imposed his law based on force and arrogance.
Iñaki Domínguez vindicates these characters in his book Intersecular Macarras (Editorial Melusina), in which he dissects the city of Madrid
with
entomologist precision
through its street myths
.
Domínguez portrays
the other Madrilenian Movida
, that back room away from the spotlight that was neither seen nor featured in the newspapers.
This anthropologist's book appears full of real characters worthy of having their own series on Netflix such as Juanma El Terrible, emblematic rocker of the time, Dum Dum Pacheco, boxer of the band Los Ojitos Negros or El Francés, the leader of the panda of mucus.
Together with the author of the book, we take a tour of
that badass and wild Madrid
, full of urban tribes, of which there is barely a trace in today's city.
Malasaña, the epicenter of drugs
Before the arrival of hipster bars, barber shops, vintage clothing stores and vegan restaurants, Malasaña stood as
one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the city
and competed in crime with Orcasitas, Pan Bendito or Vallecas.
The Plaza del Dos de Mayo
was a large drug market
, where there was a kiosk that was a nest for junkies.
The drug trade was dominated at that time by the Iranians who arrived in the capital after the outbreak of the 1979 Revolution, led by Ayatollah Khomeini.
Curiously, this historical fact led to
the boom in the consumption of heronia in Spain
, since Iran was part of the route of this drug that goes from Asia to Europe.
Photo: MIGUEL TRILLO
«Malasaña was fucking dangerous
.
When I sold heroin, I had clients of all kinds: lawyers, doctors ... Cocaine was not a common thing here in the early 80s, ”a drug dealer recounted in the book.
The confrontations between the Iranians and the Moroccans, who dealt with chocolate and resisted being expelled from the neighborhood, were frequent and ended with
the murder of a Maghreb
in the Slogan pub in the Corredera Alta in São Paulo.
Rockers, the city's toughest urban tribe, also frequented the neighborhood and were regulars at the
Iris bar and King Creole
, where the Freeway is now located.
Little by little, in Malasaña, mythical bars such as La Vía Láctea, Café Manuela, El Penta or Nueva Vision began to proliferate, which are still open, or El Mago, El Arco, La Rosa or Slogan, which have now disappeared.
At the same time, the Chicote Museum, on Gran Vía street, became the temple of modernity: “There was prostitution,
illicit drug and drug trade
.
Chicote was everything ", describes the journalist Óscar Berdugo.
Paseo de La Habana, the territory of the snot panda
Among the gangs of the time,
those of the naughty posh
, those dodgy children who dealt with criminals face to face, as the wayward sheep of the wealthy classes,
occupied a prominent place
.
Those stray bullets were not afraid that anything would happen to them because they enjoyed great impunity:
their parents had bought from the upper echelons
and were spared punishments and sentences.
The most feared of them all was the so-called
mucus panda
, originally formed by El Francés, El Judío and El Italiano.
“We were all posh neighbors on the Paseo de La Habana.
I lived on Santiago Bernabéu street, ”El Francés tells Iñaki Domínguez in the play.
The gang arose
in the Vips of the Paseo de La Habana
, which was their center of operations, where they had the waiters frightened, because they behaved almost like gangsters.
His war uniform were New Balance sneakers, jeans, and surf shirts.
The members of the band were great fans of boxing and experts in martial arts, since
Bruce Lee was all the rage at the time
.
They also liked guns and The Jew always carried a gun.
The fun of the snot gang consisted
of robbing gas stations and stealing cars
.
Then they went to Walpurguis, a leper hospital in the town of Navacerrada, to drive the stolen cars and throw them down a ravine.
But the trademark of the house was their frequent beatings.
The Frenchman and his cronies were engaged
in provoking and seeking a fight
.
They accused someone of looking at their girl, they invited her to go out and that's where the tunes began.
«I have won many fights, not because I am better than the other,
but because of the fear with which the opponent came
.
I have taken advantage of that a lot », confesses The French in the book.
One of their favorite places was Pachá -now the Barceló Theater-
where they had an open bar of coca
.
Whether they were or not, they always had a table reserved for them and, when they entered the disco, people would walk away.
Those were other times when there were hardly any police checkpoints.
«You were drunk and you could spin on the A-6 and nothing happened.
Now, crime is much more screwed up, "
laments the leader of the gang.
Rock-Ola, the temple of La Movida
If there is a memorable place in the Madrid Movida, that was Rock-Ola, which was not located in the center of the city, but
on Avenida de América
, in front of the Torres Blancas building.
In this disco
the first urban tribes of Madrid
converged
and rockers, punks and skins coexisted united by music in those early 80s.
Those were years
of street gangs
and each one of them defended their neighborhood from the strangers of the place, in the style of American films like
West Side Story
, which left a great mark on the thugs of the moment.
A group of skins.MIGUEL TRILLO
Among the most dangerous gangs was that of Carpio, who stabbed a guy to death in the lower parts of Aurrerá, and that of Ojitos Negros, famous
for imposing its law on nightclubs
.
Los Ojitos Negros were among the first to wear bell bottoms, ankle boots and long hair and were led by boxer Dum Dum Pacheco, who
had passed through the Carabanchel jail
for stealing motorcycles and cars.
The bosses of the discos called and called upon them to clean up "the mob rooms."
The band became
the protector of the singer Camilo Sexto
, who managed to play with his group Los Dayson at the Boys de Usera venue, thanks to the mediation of Dum Dum Pacheco.
«At Rock-Ola there were some very good fights.
I remember once they surrounded a colleague, El Figurín, who did not want to pay and
got involved with the seven goalkeepers
at Rock-Ola with two balls and put them all in, ”says a witness of the time.
The Rock-Ola closed its doors in 1985 after a tragic event:
the murder of Demetrio Lefler
, a mulatto rocker from the Entrevías neighborhood, the son of an American soldier and a Spanish woman, stabbed to death after a brawl with some mods.
The basses of Aurrerá, fights of mods and rockers
The squabbles between rockers and mods in the Argüelles basses were legendary.
Afternoons used to start at the Parador de Moncloa,
the first bar to serve minis
, liters in plastic cups.
Juanma El Terrible was one of the best known rockers in Madrid of the 70s and 80s and,
thanks to his famous fists
, he became the nightmare of many mods.
Juanma El Terrible's band.MIGUEL TRILLO
They went to the College of Roads, where they held parties, and when they got out of the subway, they met the rockers, who came to laugh at them and
forced them to pay for their drinks
.
The photographer Alberto García-Alix was one of the first rockers of the time, when in the 70s there were still very few in Madrid.
The clothes were bought in a store on Argensola Street, which sold tailored suits and Creepers shoes.
"The heroine ended everything
, the gangs, everything ...", says the photographer.
Violence was much more present then in the daily life of young people, including in education.
The announcer Jesús Ordovas recalls that the kids were educated with their fists and that
"the priests were beasts
that gave you hosts that slammed you against the wall."
Being a mod back then was dangerous.
This tribe was settled in Hortaleza
, Leganés and Arganda, but the largest group lived in La Alameda de Osuna, a fairly posh area.
The mods always moved in a group:
"It's not that we were cowards
, but there was a fear of getting caught, especially if you had the bad luck to be in some of the moves with the rockers."
Over the years, both tribes were blown away.
Las Barranquillas, the drug town
Pitis, La Rosilla, Entrevías ... Heroin ran like wildfire
through the towns of the capital
, but, without a doubt, the king of all of them was Las Barranquillas.
Located next to Mercamadrid, it was the largest drug market in Europe and a daily pilgrimage site for
5,000 to 15,000 drug addicts
.
The junkies would arrive there in cunda, that is, in a vehicle that took them in a group, because they knew that to get good drugs, one had to go inside the town and get to know the shacks well.
In front of the huts that sold drugs
there was always a bonfire
and the one of the Fatties was the most famous.
The most addicted addicts became the
masters
of the gypsy traffickers in the villages.
They watched the house, warned if the police arrived,
cleaned the house of syringes
and then sold them.
“While we waited for our turn, the distraction was watching a monkey tied with a chain around its neck spinning and jumping in its corner like a madman.
And El Gordo, there,
with the gun on the table
and the gypsies looking at you.
A nightmare, night after night, there.
And the people bringing him his mother's watch », recalls the photographer Alberto García-Alix in the book.
Las Colmenas, whorehouses instead of bars
The 8,000 homes in the La Concepción neighborhood were the setting where Pedro Almodóvar filmed the movie
What have I done to deserve this
.
Those 10 large blocks of buildings housed
small flats measuring 55 and 60
square
meters
, like beehives, which were built by José Banús Masdeu with political prisoners.
Located in front of the Parque de Las Avenidas, on the other side of the M-30, in Las Colmenas
there were brothels
instead of bars, located in the commercial premises below the houses.
In these buildings also resided
the mistresses of the high positions of the Police and the Army
.
Many of the clients of these brothels were Americans who worked at the Torrejón air base and who lived in the neighborhood.
Both this area and the northern part of La Castellana ended up being filled with brothels and apartments for prostitution,
already at the time of Franco
, some of which are still in force today.
Another street in the north famous for its hostess was Doctor Fleming, where
many American bars such
as the Tokio bar, the Samurai or the Acapulco and others where poker gambling clubs were organized.
In fact, when journalist Raúl del Pozo was asked where he spent the summer, he replied that it was
on the Fleming Coast
.
Over the years, with the arrival of freedoms in Spain, many of these businesses stopped working and that Apache territory began
to be domesticated
, like so many others.
Iñaki Domínguez's book reflects that time in which
the thugs themselves were the stars of the moment
and not like now when the stars are the ones posing as thugs.
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