"They have finally loaded a company of so many years in our neighborhood. A company that has given so much work to the vallecanos and that has accompanied us on our birthdays with the cakes and Christmas with the roscones", thus starts the lament of Irene, a neighbor dismayed by the closure of Luque, a factory of sweets, cakes and saladitos with retail and iconic wholesale in this working-class neighborhood, that in his last years had fallen into the hands of Mateo Martín Navarro, better known by the media as the 'Painter' of the Villarejo Case.

With 50 years of history, the Luque cake factory was one of the great points of reference of Vallecas when it comes to organizing dinners, weddings or Three Kings Day feasts. Founded in the 70s by the brothers José and Luis Luque, the establishment remained open 12 hours every day of the year. During its big day, in Reyes, the queue of neighbors looking to get one of its classic roscones half cream and half chocolate, has now become a bitter memory for the neighborhood.

What the neighbors eager for roscón found during this January 2023 was a very different picture: an informative picket of workers with signs of "20 families without payment on the street", "Change of owners. Only the boss makes money" and "Luque scam".

The new owner and head of Pastelería Luque, Mateo Martín Navarro, took control of it at the end of the summer of 2021. "From that moment on, the problems with payments began," sums up Irene, an employee who started working there before the change of address. Some problems, which have become chronic until a few days ago the mythical Luque bakery closed definitively after half a century of history, in the midst of a judicial tangle of lawsuits for non-payment of its mileurista workers and with its dissatisfied creditors.

Meanwhile, during the two years in which the business agonized, the quality was declining, prices rose and the clientele began to complain. Vallecas began to dawn papered with posters that said: "there is no bread if you work in Luque" and denounced that the owner "has been dismantling the business for months."

During that time, bank statements to which Gran Madrid has had access show a systematic delay in payments to employees. For example, one worker only managed to get paid two months in a timely manner in the span of a year. The rest of the names were split, delayed or, directly, never arrived.

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The normal thing is that he paid us late, or only a part ... Then another day he appeared and they gave you in hand 200 euros with the promise of I will pay you. The only month I got paid on terms was when I entered in December 2022. Then the delays began. Mateo would come some afternoons or some mornings, take money from the box or the safe and leave," says Yesica. "Then," he continues, "I decided to leave and he blocked me on WhatsApp, hesitated me, sent me screenshots of fake transfers... I even showed up to ask him for the money he owed me and he ran away."

14 months after the arrival of the 'Painter' at the head of the bakery, Irene relates "the situation became untenable. Everything became harassment." Why? He turned to a lawyer in the face of constant irregularities. "Others had casualties because of the pressure. There were fewer and fewer people left to do double or triple the work and they suffered physical illnesses," he says.

Mateo Martín Navarro is known as the 'Painter' thanks to a phrase of the husband of Ana Rosa Quintana captured by the omnipresent recorder of Commissioner Villarejo during the instruction of the Tandem case, because it was the man "who painted the invoices". In the Pastelería Luque, before the landing of Martín Navarro, the Mercantile Registry showed assets of 1.9 million euros and sales of 1.7 million. What has happened in the meantime? Only the 'Painter' knows where the pasta went. Meanwhile, most employees wait for the moment to collect the thousands of euros you owe them.

For the preparation of this article GRAN MADRID has tried repeatedly to contact Mateo Martín Navarro without finding an answer.

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