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Javier Cid Madrid

Madrid

Updated Saturday, February 10, 2024-00:23

Not even Berlanga dared to cook an appetizer with such very Spanish ingredients:

a neighborhood raging against the mayor

- always until victory -, a trip to Cuba with expenses paid and every comfort to meet Commander Fidel Castro,

an illegal referendum in the house of The Desi

, voted on handmade ballots placed in a clay jar, and a declaration of independence through the work and grace of neighborhood sovereignty that went around the world.

This is the fabulous story of Cerro Belmonte

, the Madrid neighborhood that proclaimed itself a kingdom for a week. Seven days of institutional delirium with roars of banners and festivals that put municipal diplomacy in check (compared to those 8 seconds of heart attack that the independence of Catalonia survived), but whose echo still reverberates behind the walls of

some of the old mansions that have survived real estate speculation

in the north of the capital.

It all started in 1989, when 125 families from this area of ​​substandard housing in the Valdezarza area - small low houses with dilapidated backyards built in the 1920s -

received a notification of expropriation from the Urban Planning Management of the City Council

. then commanded by Mayor Agustín Rodríguez Sahagún. They were offered to move to the other end of the city - Vallecas or Villaverde -

or compensate them with 5,018 pesetas (30 euros) per square meter

. In exchange, some high-end townhouses would be built at the not inconsiderable price of 200,000 pesetas per meter. That was the fuse that lit the outbreak of the revolts.

Neighbors of Cerro Belmonte in 1990.ÁNGEL CASAÑA


After the pertinent complaints and several attempts to speak with the mayor to reverse such a blow in the real estate preambles of '92, the neighbors, most of them elderly without resources,

barely received an insolent administrative silence

. Then the protests began to the bombastic bustle of the pots, the demonstrations in front of the councilor's house, the bulls in the Collegiate Church of San Isidro equipped with stews and chocolate with churros - although there were also hunger strikes -,

the first headlines, still lukewarm , in the press of the time

.

In the summer of 1990, taking advantage of the fact that diplomatic relations between Havana and Felipe González were not going through their best moment, 250 residents submitted a written request for political asylum at the Cuban Embassy in Madrid. That marketing maneuver bore fruit and

reached the ears of Fidel Castro

, who during one of his endless speeches -on the occasion of the 37th anniversary of the assault on the Moncada Barracks-, dedicated 45 minutes to the heroic residents of Cerro Belmonte, and to the capitalist voracity that sought to tear them from their homes.


The commander saw in that handful of desperate neighbors the perfect excuse to challenge Felipism and, why not, improve its international image; Said and done,

he extended an invitation to Havana to 25 Belmonteños

, for whom he would pay for the flight and a 10-day stay, and who would be chosen by a very rigorous draw in an assembly.

The colorful delegation (made up of neighbors of all ages, from a 10-year-old girl to an 80-year-old man) crossed the pond in the month of August to coincide with the commander's birthday. And the Belmonteños, who had barely left the Meseta,

were received with state honors at the Palace of the Revolution

, but not before visiting the paradisiacal beaches of Varadero.

"Fidel was mentally ill,"

Ángel Torres explains to GRAN MADRID at the doors of his house

, one of the few that still resists those real estate attacks, and from whose small patio with openwork walls protrudes a vine recently pruned by him and some plants that already point to the early spring in Madrid. He was one of the leaders of the Cerro Belmonte revolution and, ultimately, of its independence process. "His brother, Raúl Castro, was more serious, more intellectual. When he arrived "They gave us a cigar, books, a Communist Party cap. If we wore it wrong, Raúl immediately called our attention: 'Hey, the cap!'"

Fidel receives several neighbors in Cuba.EM


Despite the Castro regime's offer of asylum, no Belmonteño agreed to stay and live on the island. And the final arson of their own revolution awaited them in Madrid.

The call for a referendum to proclaim the independence of Cerro Belmonte

. "The idea was Raúl Castro's," recalls Ángel Torres, a locksmith by profession who is about to turn 80, and who everyone in the neighborhood knows as Jalati. "He means 'communicative person' in Arabic, because I lived for several years in Mauritania and Senegal."

The vote took place the first week of September at the home of one of the oldest neighbors, Desideria Becerril, La Desi. By then, the press throughout Europe had already echoed the revolt. All the neighbors voted in a earthenware jar and the result was overwhelming:

112 votes in favor of independence, two against and two declared invalid

for uttering serious insults to the mayor on the ballots. The Kingdom of Cerro Belmonte was thus established.

The constitutional machinery began to work immediately.

A Constitution was drafted that was distributed in dozens of photocopies

, and whose ARTICLE I read as follows: «The Kingdom of Belmonte includes the following autonomous communities (the Principality of Villaamil and the County of Peña Chica), whose crown is offered to His Majesty on King Juan Carlos I. In said kingdom, justice, equality, political pluralism and HAPPINESS will be advocated. So, in capital letters.

Of course, the Magna Carta abolished expropriation and offered political asylum to all those who felt ignored by the municipal authorities. To complete the creation of this incipient state, borders were delimited with construction fences and

an official currency was minted, the Belmonteño

, whose value was set at 5,018 pesetas, the price that the City Council wanted to pay families for each square meter expropriated. . Of course,

a flag was designed with a white triangle on one side as a tribute to the island of Cuba

and a red star stolen from the Madrid banner - so the authorities were requested in writing to eliminate one of the seven official stars of the flag. community banner.

Jalati, one of the leaders of the revolts, today.ÁNGEL NAVARRETE


A toll was also installed on the Sinesio Delgado highway

, with whose succulent income they would cover all the expenses of the kingdom. But there's even more: the punk group Kaduka 92, whose members were residents of the neighborhood, composed an anthem based on a popular song that said: "We want bread, we want wine, we want the mayor hanging from a pine tree."

The independence party, held on the soccer field, was epic. They drank until the wee hours, the anthem was played, the punk followers of Kaduka 92 mixed with the locals, adults and children, and

even the Cuban diplomats from the embassy were invited

, all in happy camaraderie. "It may seem funny now, but it was a very hard episode," explains Jalati. «We camped on the field for a long time, we stood guard, the younger ones during the day and the older ones at night. Nobody had ever sent us here, we fixed our houses, we painted them, a bricklayer never came in, and suddenly they wanted to take everything from us. I got up to the roof of my house and told them:

'You don't have the guts to let me down.' And they didn't have them

.

Seven days after the official proclamation of independence, those responsible for Urban Planning at the City Council, perhaps shaken by the noise and jokes, surrendered to the avalanche of international headlines that covered the sympathetic feat of a group of neighbors of humble origins who never They surrendered, they stopped the expropriations.

And the Kingdom of Belmonte was automatically dissolved

. «We fight, we throw eggs at him. "I was out of work for three months, and I don't want medals, but we did what we had to do... and we won."

José Luis Guerra, currently.ÁNGEL NAVARRETE


But not all neighbors suffered the same fate. "The houses down there, those in Peña Chica, where gypsies and the poorest people who could not defend themselves lived, were demolished." Jalati says goodbye behind the gate of his house. "But they couldn't with us."

-And you don't have any Belmonteño left? The official currency, I mean...

-Oh, I don't have any left. So many people have come here asking questions... I don't answer anyone anymore, you're lucky. Because if I told everything I know...

Just 200 meters away, on Emerenciana Zurilla Street,

José Luis Guerra Valdivia looks out from the patio of Villa Carmen

, another of the last houses that can withstand the real estate pressure of this area in the north of Madrid. "Six families have lived here and this no longer passes the Technical Building Inspection," he explains, resigned before the green wooden door. «And now I'm the only one left, who can't pay for any repairs. The architect is coming today to see what he tells me. They want to declare it bankrupt and throw me out.

But where am I going to go at 68 years old?

».

As if life, sometimes, came with a round trip ticket...