Robes, blankets and 'fat' pajamas... The fight without heating against the coldest days of winter: "I have my children at home with coats"

• Electricity bill Social Electricity Bonus: new categories, beneficiaries and how to apply for aid

• Interview "Severe energy poverty has gotten extraordinarily worse: 2 million households cannot heat their homes"

"I'm cold, I don't put anything because I can't pay for it."

The stark paradox of what was supposed to be the warmest winter in recent years.

Loli, a neighbor of Vicálvaro, explains it.

"We spend our lives outside and at home we are warm. I can't invite anyone. If someone comes, we go out and on the weekend I take the dog for a walk 40 times a day."

Although she works, Loli's adjusted salary does not keep up with the rise in electricity.

Her only luxury, a quick hot shower to get dressed even faster.

"My situation is tough, the cold immobilizes you," she admits.

"If I have to freeze and have a bad time, then I have a bad time."

This will to resist does not hide the fact that, despite the measures approved by the Government to reduce the bill, the so-called energy poverty seems to be advancing again.

According to the latest data, referring to 2021, 11.2% of the population of the Community of Madrid suffers from inadequate temperatures at home in winter.

Although this percentage improves the national average (14.3%), it is the energy poverty indicator that has grown the most in the last five years in all of Spain.

cold at home

A hot topic since mid-January in supermarket conversations.

Cold among workers with modest salaries.

Olga lives in Valdezarza, a neighborhood from which the towers of the capital's financial center can be clearly seen.

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That month her electricity bill rose from 65 to 105 euros.

Silvia, in Lucero, resorts to the stove and the butane cylinder.

"It's also expensive, but you spend less. Although at night it looks like a freezer."

At night this looks like a freezer

Silvia, worker

Cold among pensioners with the lowest benefits.

Alejandro lives in a few blocks of mill houses surrounded by flats, as if the city had swallowed them and hadn't digested them.

"Things are very messed up: heating, one hour a day and the rest we manage with blankets."

With feathers and a hurried step, other retirees agree that they allow "few hours" of heat at home, "less than in previous years."

Cold for those who have an individual installation or only have old heaters.

Even more so if they do not benefit from the social bonus or the most appropriate rate for their consumption.

Near the start of Paseo de Extremadura, three kilometers from Puerta del Sol, Luisa leans out to smoke in front of a forest of hermetic blocks barely decorated by the hanging clothes.

She, a widow and with a benefit of around 1,000 euros, makes do with the air conditioning heat pump and only turns on the heating when her daughter and her grandchildren come to visit her.

She heats the rooms and removes it when they leave.

"The child's robe, the one they wear at home, has returned," says the manager of Centrotex, a clothing store located in the same neighborhood, which a leisure magazine presented as the Brooklyn of Madrid.

This winter, he confirms, they have sold many more blankets, robes, thick pajamas, T-shirts and thermal socks than before.

María de Laiglesia, responsible for the Environment of the Red Cross in the Community of Madrid, traces the complete portrait.

"The person who cannot pay for electricity, water, gas, etc... is the most visible. But there are others who are very tight, they pay for the electricity so that it is not cut off."

Because this precariousness is a symptom of other hardships.

And the lower the per capita income, the houses are in worse condition and generally poorly insulated from the outside.

There has been an increase in defaults, with electricity a lot has been noticed

Barbara, Red Cross

So far this year,

It is the last step of a project in which BP, Endesa and Fundación Naturgy are collaborating.

An accompaniment that includes training to understand invoices and choose rates, help to process the social bonus, delivery of savings kits and, on occasions, home repairs.

"That saving is the difference so that a family can eat fresh protein, it can be chicken or fish, once that week, or so that the minors can go on a school excursion," María analyzes.

Barbara and Diana are volunteer trainers in the Local Assembly of Aranjuez.

Yes, there has been an increase in non-payments: with electricity a lot has been noticed, people who have stopped paying it because those bills have skyrocketed from about 60 euros to 300 per month," details the first.

These non-payments represent, precisely, the other upward indicator of the so-called energy poverty.

The latest data -corresponding to 2021- show that 7.9% of the population of the Community of Madrid (9.5% in all of Spain) incurs delays when paying utility bills.

Teresa -name assumed to protect her privacy- went to the Red Cross in Aranjuez for help because she is going through a very difficult personal situation.

She lives for rent in an old town house with two floors.

Thick walls, old windows, a dark environment.

"I worry about humidity for my children," she says.

"You're in the living room and you're fine, but you go to the bathroom and you say 'I'm going to pee on stalactites'."

A heater in an old houseEM

The bill, which is around 130 euros per month, exceeds his possibilities and barely covers his needs.

And that they are also heated with firewood.

The cold appears at night.

"I go to bed with five blankets and the duvet."

And it remains at the start of the morning.

"I wake up very angry, I even wake up shivering."

Víctor Rodríguez, responsible for analysis of the Observatory of Reality of Cáritas Diocesana in Madrid, outlines a geography of the cold at home.

"The southern and eastern areas of Madrid, old houses in the center and houses on the periphery that have worse construction, but are not concentrated in a specific area."

In addition to working, like the Red Cross, in the field of medium-term training and facing -also with Fundación Naturgy- punctual reparations,

;

in 2019 there had been 1,512.

"The cost of energy has increased and families need larger amounts of aid," confirms Víctor.

According to their data, energy poverty punishes "with more intensity families, especially single-parent families, with minors, the migrant population and the elderly with very low pensions."

It emphasizes what it means for those children.

"It affects health, it influences how they sleep or how well they look at school if they have to reduce washing machines, it affects their image."

I don't tell, I'd be ashamed

Carmen (assumed name)

One of those single-parent families is that of Carmen -assumed name-, resident in Majadahonda.

She lives on the third floor with her mother and her two children.

The cold that they have suffered in January and February starts from the stress of August.

In the three summer months, she accumulated a debt of 700 euros for the air conditioning that she put "only by the hour."

She used to pay about 50 or 60 a month.

Cáritas has paid part of that hole and the rest of it is sealing it.

"I don't use the heating because I'm afraid that more bills like that could come my way, I almost died,"

he says by phone.

"With this strong cold, what we do is close the blinds and we are warm."

Although he works in another house, the salary evaporates between the rent of his, food and medicines.

"Gas is also very expensive, water a little less, I can't afford these services."

Hungry or cold, a diabolic dilemma.

The anguish of the red numbers also damages self-esteem.

"I don't tell it, I would be ashamed, I can't give my children the warmth that I have to give them."

Carmen's hope is already named March and is called Spring, when at least one of her problems will disappear.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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