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The residents of the Opañel neighborhood, in the Carabanchel district of Madrid, are desperate.

For a year and a half

they have lived with a dozen homeless people who, they say, live "without law

. "

They accumulate garbage, fight among themselves and with their neighbors and relieve themselves in the middle of the street while drinking alcohol at all hours.

Some even have sex in broad daylight, covered only by a blanket, according to some residents.

These homeless people

have settled at the door of the San Vicente de Paúl Municipal Center for the Elderly

, where the elderly in the area go during the day.

María Ángeles Campillos, a neighbor of the neighborhood, assures that the mattresses where they sleep cover the emergency exit of the center and are attached to the kitchens of the building, which also served as a school for a while after the pandemic.

Alcohol cans, cigarette butts, food scraps, carts with junk and garbage of all kinds accumulate on the sidewalk.

Brawls and loud discussions are also common at any time.

“One day when I went with my son, we saw how

two women were passing drugs and having sex with some of the homeless people

covered with a blanket,” says Campillos.

The residents of the neighborhood feel threatenedJavier Barbancho

Francisco Grande runs a nearby restaurant, which many of them used first thing in the morning to wash up.

Until he forbade it.

"The toilets, which had just been cleaned, left them in a mess," he complains.

Instead they now use nearby dumpsters and a park around the corner, where feces accumulate, as toilets.

The smell is "unbearable" and more so with high temperatures.

Grande assures that the children who pass by to go to school have to cover their noses 10 or 15 meters before arriving.

Some neighbors, who decided to confront them, feel threatened

.

They do not even dare to go out on their balcony for fear of reprisals.

In one of the portals, the homeless wrote the word "Chibato", just below the room of a neighbor's son.

They usually urinate there.

"They do it on purpose, as revenge," explains Campillos.

The beggars themselves assure that none of this is so.

No fights, no noise, no drugs, much less sex.

They defend that they are not criminals, that they are not doing anything wrong and that living on the street is not illegal: “The police are on our side.

When they come, they take our data and tell us to leave and come back in two hours.

In addition, they affirm that they use the public toilets in Plaza Elíptica to wash themselves and relieve themselves.

Nothing to do in the middle of the street.

NO RESPONSE FROM THE AUTHORITIES

The neighbors have reported to the Madrid City Council, the National Police and the Municipal Police, but, they say, none has offered them solutions.

«This would not happen in the Salamanca district, but in Carabanchel, yes.

Don't we have the same rights?

Campillos complains.

From time to time, when neighborhood complaints accumulate, the cleaning services come to the site to evict them and clean the area.

But

after a few hours the situation is the same again.

The truth is that the beggars have already learned their lesson, so they hide their belongings to retrieve them when the municipal services have left.

"Until now we had to start each week from scratch," lament these homeless people.

Police say they cannot act unless they are caught committing a crime.

And from Samur Social they report that one of the homeless has been referred to the mental health team, but that

all of them have refused a place in the municipal centers for the homeless

.

The neighbors assure that they refuse to leave because that would prevent them from having a nightlife.

"They want to be free so they can drink and smoke," says Grande.

NEIGHBORHOOD SOLUTION

The residents of the area propose an

enclosure with bars

so that the beggars do not have space to get into.

Thus, they say, they make sure that when they manage to expel them, others will not come.

“I have lived here all my life and we are very sorry, because it is a good neighborhood” laments Campillos, who assures that the neighborhood fight will continue until the situation is resolved.

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