Society Dog walkers, the booming business in the 'rich' neighborhoods of Madrid: "Humanize animals? I don't pass one"
Culture Javier Gurruchaga's obsession with the Moyano slope: "He doesn't have the promotion he should"
The bushy areas of the Retiro, those paths less traveled, the vegetable corners that nobody watches, offer a feeling of intimacy that some people take advantage of to leave their browns.
This is not about atoning for the anxieties and stresses of work through open-air meditation or absolution, on our knees at a picnic, from the nagging problems of existence.
No.
-
The public restrooms of the Retiro are very scarce
-says Javier Puente, president of the Association of Friends of the Good Retiro.
A heat map of intestinal emergencies could be superimposed on the 125 hectares of the park.
Those who walk the Xs marked on the ground are the owners of the dogs, who follow their pets to the human excrement.
"For dogs they are irresistible
," says Eva Ramos, walker and founder of The Walking Dog.
"It's a delicatessen. Even if you wash their mouths a lot, they smell for days and cause vomiting and diarrhea in many cases."
"What causes the most problems is that animals eat feces with traces of narcotics. In that case, pets come to us with signs of intoxication.
It is not that it is directly toxic. It depends a lot on what the person has consumed
, "explains one veterinarian at the Velázquez Veterinary Hospital.
Eva dares to point out the culprits, not counting those who cross the park in search of another
after party
.
«Since running became fashionable, about eight years ago,
the number of poops in the Retiro is exaggerated.
Many dog owners have stopped going because of this problem
. "
Is there really a stool problem at the Retreat?
From the Department of the Environment of the City Council they comment that they do not know.
However, María, who has been working as a cleaner at the Retiro for 13 years, knows what she is talking about.
"The area that runs through O'Donnell is usually full of human poop.
It is one of the busiest for the corridors
. The bathrooms should open earlier. From six in the afternoon until 10 in the morning the next day they are closed. First thing in the morning, those who come to party, those who go to work and the runners pass through," he observes.
"We and the gardeners take care of raising the hedges a little to prevent them from feeling safe, to discourage them from pooping.
One day I surprised a woman crouching down, I asked what she was doing and as if it wasn't with her
. She didn't say anything.
He's just doing maintenance work on the fisherman's house.
He accumulates 15 years working here.
"Why do you think this," he asks as he rolls up a hose, "is it fenced off?
They used it as a bathroom
. "
He refers to the ruins of the hermitage of San Pelayo and San Isidro.
"In all this time I have not surprised anyone but it is disgusting to find poop.
This was a common area."
Another operator prefers not to say his name.
"The normal thing is that people who come at 6 in the morning and find the public toilets closed, do it.
What are you going to do, do it to yourself?
The normal thing is that if they have a need, they do it where they can."
"At half past eight I usually meet groups of tourists who ask about the toilets. I send them to a little tree," adds Javier Puente, who lives on Menéndez Pelayo street.
Of the public toilets, "three are underground.
They do not comply with accessibility regulations.
They have been without electricity for 10 years. The poor man who is there watching from ten to six in the afternoon often has to put the flashlight of the mobile on those who go down to the toilet."
Running and clay doll?
A study conducted at St. Bartholomew's Hospital in London concluded that gastrointestinal symptoms during exercise experienced by 30-65% of runners were due to
"decreased blood flow to the viscera"
during running.
According to another study,
Dietary Restrictions in Long-Distance Runners to Mitigate Exercise-Induced Gastrointestinal Symptoms
, one of the most common causes of gastric upset is "
the urge to defecate
. "
22% of athletes suffer from it.
"It's more psychological than physical," says Giselle Ruiz, from the Runners club Retiro.
He hasn't remembered a similar urgency for a long time.
"During the races it is normal for queues to form at the booths set up by the organization.
Maybe someone doesn't want to wait and is looking for a place to do it," she adds.
Of all the runners who have passed through the club, only one, "to my knowledge", had to deal with the boycott of his own body.
"But he asked me for the keys to the premises. You have to be very bad not to get to a service. It is a problem of education.
There are polite and rude brokers."
There does not seem to be a psychiatric burden behind these behaviors.
"Curling the loop could be people with some antisocial trait, who do not have consideration for the rules and the consequences of not complying with them.
There is no psychiatric disorder
," explains psychiatrist Javier Andrada.
"Some people feel sexual arousal from feces. It usually occurs in secluded environments," rules out coprophilia.
Then?
"It is uncivil behavior. Similar to not picking up dog poop.
If there is alcohol or drugs, the cause-effect relationship is also lost."
The gardeners have another delimited area.
The fluids from the corridors do not reach there.
Near Atocha, the gardens hide the spontaneous couples who practice
cruising
.
Maria wrinkles her nose.
"It is more complicated to work because it wakes up full of condoms, toilet paper and remains of poop,"
she says.
"It is very unpleasant to do this with the broom in a palm tree and run into those remains."
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