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The news lit a fuse in the neighborhood.

Published at the end of November and the first edition already sold out, more than 500 copies were sold in the Santander bookstore alone until this week, when publishers of literary reputation today launch editions with smaller print runs.

There, in the oldest bookstore in the neighborhood (1968), a young woman decided to give the book to an old man whom she did not know and who discovered it with just enough money for the newspaper.

"I can't give it to my parents anymore, so I buy it from you as if it were them," recalls the Christmas anecdote

Antonio Javier Roldán Calzado

(Lucena, Córdoba, 1968), co-author with his brother

Juan Luis Roldán Calzado

(1970) of

aluche

(Temporary).

This historical and photographic compilation (more than 200 images, many unpublished), linked between regional archives and original testimonies taken "almost door to door", is the sensation of the moment in the most populous historical neighborhood of the capital.

A fair and "demanded" tribute to a territory that its inhabitants raised and whose epicenter,

the Aluche park,

is decked out this year: it turns 50.

That oxygen pump, which recreated the Luche stream in its original design -the seed of the geographical name-, was planned in January 1973 and inaugurated in June by the remorseful person responsible, two years later, for "Spaniards, Franco is dead".

Juan Luis emphasizes that "the park gave it character, and structured the south and north of the neighborhood, which stopped being a set of blocks."

Carlos Arias Navarro

, the Francoist mayor who was then rising to the Government, gave his name to these 15.96 green hectares until the Manuela Carmena City Council changed its name in 2016, after years of popular petition, and consolidating in the neighborhood what belongs to the neighborhood: its pride from neighborhood.

Juan Luis and Antonio Javier Roldán, authors of 'Aluche'. JAVIER BARBANCHO

Exactly what both writers, mathematicians and teachers by profession, highlight as the alchemy of Aluche: "When it started with some difficulty, it made it a very militant community, with a great fabric of demands, which has fought for improvements. A neighborhood very close to its neighborhood ".

And it's not a topic.

It is José Luis, signatory of three other books in the Temporae series on Madrid neighborhoods, who highlights this singularity: "In other places, perhaps one lives by chance,

here people feel very much from Aluche

", defines those 65,833 people. , heirs of Extremadurans, Andalusians, Castilians and "couples from Madrid", who projected their illusions from these plots of land in the Latina district.

And that they do not give up on it, like the singer

Marwan

-stellar performance of 2022 at the post-pandemic parties-;

the skater

Javier Fernández

-he made his first steps in the now-defunct Diamond's and in 2018 he refused to have the sports center named in his honor, because there is no ice rink-;

soccer players like

Martín Vázquez

;

the cyclist

Eduardo Chozas

;

the musician

Depedro -on

a cover he can be seen as a child where he grew up- or the actor Valentín Tornos, mythical Don Cicuta from

Un, Dos, Tres

.

If we cross celebrity borders,

Nadia Comaneci

trained in the Aluche pavilion in 1977, a few months after the perfect 10 in Montreal.

Arias Navarro at the inauguration of the Aluche park.

They are some of the illustrious people who burn these modest streets, but who fight for dignity, like other less famous ones, such as

Julián Rebollo

, who jumped into politics from the neighboring Covijo (Cooperativa de Viviendas de Jóvenes Obreros, from 1962) and He

was a councilor for the PCE in 1979, with another resident of the plot, this socialist,

Ángel Hernández Craqui

, in that corporation of Tierno Galván.

Félix Cortés and Florencio Sánchez, historical neighborhood leaders, even have a square in their name.

"They arrived with few resources and bought ground floors to open the terrace and set up their businesses there," Antonio, who has been a neighbor by crush since 1995, details about his origin.

Aluche is the best symbol of that Spain of developmentalism, until it became for years the most populated neighborhood of Madrid's 131.

In 2022 it lost that condition, for 377 inhabitants, to the benefit of Valdefuentes, which integrates Valdebebas and Sanchinarro, products of developmentalism in the 21st century version.

If those expansions were born with little, Aluche

"really came out of nowhere"

.

It is not pre-existing, like those 13 towns integrated into Greater Madrid after the War (Chamartín de la Rosa, Carabanchel Bajo, Carabanchel Alto, Canillas, Canillejas, Hortaleza, Aravaca, Barajas, El Pardo, Vallecas, Vicálvaro, Fuencarral and Villaverde).

The Aluche park, which is now 50 years old. JAVIER BARBANCHO

In the surroundings of

the Luche stream

, you could barely see the three Caraque streets and some small houses in the Altozano or Illescas -still unnamed-.

Rather, it was a huge plot of land (195 hectares), an area of ​​orchards, around the Manzanares tributary and which was developed with private promotions from a Compensation Board, created now 65 years ago, in 1958, to raise almost 30,000 homes -those first Madrid towers with up to 17 floors-, eight schools, three churches and 29 green areas.

"It was brutal, because almost all of them had problems. If it wasn't equipment, it was even scams, like

developers who remortgaged behind the owners' backs

or they did not meet the specifications", illustrates Juan Luis. For the residents of Puerto Chico, the house raised 60,000 pesetas from 1965, up to 211,800 (1,272.94 euros), and a certain Joaquín Ruiz-Giménez, minister, came to advise them of Education in the 50s and the first Ombudsman in a democracy.

And from that

spark

, that Aluchana rebellion burned.

Or what Antonio describes as "a neighborhood with a heart, very alive", because "each neighbor contributes a heartbeat to improve".

He even lends the headline: "In the park you can say that it is always Sunday: terraces, little horses...".

Don't miss the joy, wow, with its traditional festivals, since 1976. "People who were born here, but live far away, know they have an appointment."

Unappealable as that "union" that still overflows the

Aluche Neighborhood Association (AVA)

.

Children going to school between the first blocks of flats.CEDED

Founded in 1974, it was not legal until 1976. Before that, the one in Puerto Chico came together and in parallel the Association of Housewives of Aluche grew, which in 1977 would already claim to be feminist as

the Association of Women of Aluche

.

They even organized a center for family planning and sexual orientation in the Transition.

"The neighborhood grew without institutes, or medical or cultural centers. The AVA was fighting for every vacant lot. The older ones conquered each piece of equipment by insisting," says Antonio, attached to the AVA's own archive of letters and images, a legacy as valuable as the official records of the NO-DO, the Metro, Urbanism or the Regional Archive, in which Juan Luis also investigated to put together the book.

Although the purity brooch has been given by the neighbors, lending memorabilia and photos in sepia or black and white.

"You can see that in every street there is a fight: either there was a lack of lighting or the water pressure, or because of a scam by the builder."

They continue undaunted.

"They also fought for the prison land," he recalls of another symbol, the

Carabanchel prison

(1944), with a fame only comparable to the Barcelona Model and whose demolition reactivated the citizen turmoil so that on the barren land it would rise a hospital.

"People, who were a little asleep, woke up again," Antonio assesses, himself infected with the common.

Journalists during the War, at Km. 5 of the Extremadura Highway. CANCELED

When the Covid appeared, he saw the AVA notice on the networks that computers were needed for schoolchildren.

A mathematician from the computer science branch, he came - and has not left - to get them ready.

They distributed more than 200, with the same determination that the

Aluche Mutual Support Network currently cares

for more than 600 families, those "hunger lines" that, the Roldán brothers say in unison, "are lines of hope, because here there is the opportunity;

there is no more hunger than in other places but more hope

". Food banks, today's struggle, like half a century ago, 1976, they revolted over the dismissal of a Simago worker and 13 ended up in detention. "A couple ended up in the DGS and they said they were not worried about their children, that the neighbors would take care of them.

That's how it went.

In Aluche, those who need it are taken care of."

Happy milestones along with days of mourning, like that of the ETA attack that Irene Villa survived.

Or, much earlier, the murder of neighbor Yolanda González, a left-wing militant victim of the extreme right.

A plaque in her memory has been displayed since 2013 at the foot of the statue of

La niña que lee

and that, together with the suburban (1961), the streets with names of towns in Toledo (since 1966), the park (1973) or the interchange -the first in Madrid, from 1987- allow us to reconstruct history through icons.

The Roldán brothers say that Julio López finished the statue the day the Constitution of 1978 was approved and that he devised it with his daughter in mind, a great reader.

He called the work

Esperanza walking

, like the replica planted in Oviedo, but that the Madrid City Council has cataloged as

La Colegiala

.

One last detail that illustrates the precision of a book that succeeds in its purpose: "

The memory of the elders

, how they built this neighborhood, each fight, is a treasure and it was being lost."

Yeah, less.

El Sanatonio Iturralde. CANCELED

'Customs', sanatoriums, barracks and 'blockhaus'

Aluche was the Ventas de Alcorcón, where wine was served already in 1585 and where hundreds of years later, where the electrical substation is today, a tax collection portazgo was erected to access Madrid.

Later, he saw the rise of sanatoriums - the Esquerdo, Carabanchel Asylum (1877), or the Iturralde (image above) - and military installations.

It was the border of the front line in the Civil War -below, journalists in that area- and, except at the beginning, when the Republicans came to quell the insurgents in the barracks, it was lived without great shock.

Several 'blockhaus' remain from those days, shooting forts of the Francoist side used later as substandard housing.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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