Madrid offers emergency shelter to 4,000 slum dwellers without electricity in record cold snap

A woman holds up a torch to illuminate her house in the Canada Real shanty town

Credit: Manu Fernandez /AP

Some 1,500 families living in a shantytown outside Madrid have been offered temporary shelter by local authorities as they battle below-freezing temperatures with no electricity supply.

Approximately 4,000 residents of the Cañada Real slum area southeast of the Spanish capital have seen their electricity cut off by power company Naturgy since October, allegedly due to cannabis cultivation in the area.

The power company says that there is suspiciously high demand for electricity in the area which it believes is due to lights to grow cannabis, leading to excessive demand on the infrastructure and blackouts.

The result is that despite record-breaking cold weather, most families in the slum have only able to light and heat their homes for a few hours a day with costly fuel generators.

As Storm Filomena brought snow to Madrid over recent days and with temperatures predicted to drop as low as -7 degrees Celsius on Tuesday, Madrid authorities announced emergency shelter, including a former factory and the parish centre of a local church.

However, most of the slum dwellers said they preferred to stay in their homes out of fears of Covid-19 contagion and concerns they could be barred from returning to their residences, which are not legally registered.

People queue to collect food and goods as the snow falls at the Canada Real shanty town

Credit: Manu Fernandez /AP

“No way are we going to that place,” Mustafa Najah, a Moroccan immigrant who has lived in the shantytown with his family for 35 years, told the newspaper El País.

“We don’t want a refuge; we want electricity."

Since October, Naturgy has said its investigations have found more than 60 illegal electricity connections with industrial-scale electricity usage, and says it is working to strengthen the system so the supply does not collapse every time it experiences an overload.

The power company and local authorities have not been able to find a way to guarantee power supply to local families and cut off only the cannabis farmers believed to operate in the slums despite months of talks, prompting Spain’s national government to demand an immediate solution.

Citing a potential “health emergency” due to the cold snap, deputy Prime Minister Pablo Iglesias demanded that Naturgy restore the electricity supply or the regional government of Madrid ask for army units to install generators.

Olivier de Schutter, the UN’s special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, has slammed Spain’s inaction over the past three months, saying that more than 1,800 children are living without electricity.

“Leaving families in this terrible situation is a violation of several international treaties Spain has ratified,” Mr De Schutter said at the weekend.