No one has had the heart, mouth or ears closer to the ground than Oscar Vásquez has had. Perhaps because of that proximity to the surface, Vásquez, 47, thought that the tile on which he slept since 2023 in the right wing of floor 2 of terminal 4 of the Barajas airport would be “her floor.” However, its soil is no longer its ground. This was decided by Aena when airlines like Fly Emirates, complained that in front of their counters was the floor and the bed of hundreds of homeless while the images ran like gunpowder in the media. The figure, once the winter has passed, still ranges between 300 and 400 people. As they are not disappearing, you had to try at least to hide them. And they got it ten meters below – on floor 1 – where tourists only pass by mistake.
Plant number two is now an ode to order and apparent neatness. There the check-in. There are also stores and restaurants, as well as the pharmacy, public bathrooms or the small police station of the National Police. What there are no longer are seats. They retired a few days after many workers refused to provide their services for a bedpore pest. First it was ordered to limit its use with plastic tapes until they have finally been eliminated. Fly Emirates counters has become untouchable, no one can happen once they are closed. For this there are vigilantes around it every two by three and an endless posts with retractable tapes cordon the area. What no passenger from those who circulates there when the night arrives can imagine is what he has under his feet.
The number one plant has become a kind of guetto for those who come to spend. “They are not able to throw ourselves, but to corner us. Here they leave us to our fate,” Vásquez says when the blanket extends on the cardboard, on the glass side. This new location does not like. Compares it to a “hive.” “The more we are, the more conflicts we have,” he says. What worries him most is that “you can no longer separate from those who give problems, those who drink and consume. We are all in the same bag.” Before, Vásquez worked in that tile on floor 2 that could have brought his name. Nobody argued the site or bothered him. I could “be on the sidelines” of the world. That is over. The location where everyone is piled up is a small corridor with offices that are not operational right now but that can be again at any time. Over there they travel just a handful of workers. Tourists never do unless they have been wrong. When someone appears, “their faces are horror.”
Isidro – fictional name – 40 years old, does not want to reveal his identity so as not to suffer reprisals. He is a passage agent in the T4, usually in afternoon and night shifts. “We had never seen a plague of bed bugs. For a week we are with three and four workers with daily bites. It is fumigating but the problem continues. One of the consequences is that the homeless people are being cornered. Instead of giving them a solution they aggravates their problem by hiding them in view of others,” he says. “If the workers, who sleep at home, shower and wash our clothes, are affecting Health with dizziness, rashes and throat pains, what will not happen to these people? We have not seen down there. It is an unfortunate situation. It will end something fat,” he complains.
The ASAE union has informed the community of Madrid this health problem. The community, in turn, “has transferred it to the Deputy Directorate of External Health of the Ministry of Health to make the diagnosis of situation to identify the plague and carry out the appropriate efforts.”
Aena, in a statement, affirms that “the company specialized in disintection has not determined at any time in its reports the existence of a plague.” Insects are “at very limited points” and, on the other hand, “you cannot confirm” that the origin is the homeless people of the airport. According to the company, they “do not locate in any plant, but work are done so that these people do not always remain in the same areas.” However, ASAE denounces that these people “have been forced to leave their original location” for the “pressures” of the airlines. “They are hidden in floor 1, the least visible place. We are facing the greatest degradation of the most important international airport in Spain in its history. If this Bronx It is not cut we will regret any more dead, “says Antonio Llarena, general secretary of ASAE, referring to the death of a homeless person on March 20.
For its part, the Madrid City Council explains that “technical meetings continue to hold with the people of AENA, the Delegation of the Government and the Community of Madrid so that in a coordinated way all the competent administrations can offer a decent response to the people who live and spend the night in the airport”.
Security problems are frequent in Barajas. Without going any further, on April 27, a man unleashed a fire extinguisher at the exit door of the T4 ground floor. He began to direct the so -called “extinguisher agent” to those present – an apparels, vigilantes, passengers – until an important gray cloud covered the area for several minutes. Five days before, on April 22, a brawl. In the 950-97 counters two men faced each other, one that defended himself with a knife and another that did it with a screwdriver. On Tuesday of this week he was withdrawn to another male “a large razor.”
The main novelty in terms of security measures is an ambiguous poster at the meter door. “For the permanence and access to the airport, the necessary information will be required,” can be read. Three uniformed agents, led by one called Juan, are placed as a retaining wall at the automatic door of Terminal 1 from eleven o’clock at night. “Where are you going?” They ask. Anyone who responds that comes to spend the passing of the step. However, they are fully aware that it is useless. “They turn around, they enter the parking or with the bus and after a while we see you in the hall. We cannot throw them out. Actually, there is a free way,” Juan admits.
The clandestine shelter that has been formed at the number one plant of the T4 hosts all kinds of realities. While security guards try to separate three fought men near the elevator, another agent draws the attention of a man hidden in a corner that was masturbating. Five meters from the scene, the Spanish Rosa V., 67, the Venezuelan David Romero, 33, and the Argentine Manuel Castellano, 36, try to clarify a joint plan to leave the floor of Barajas. Romero and Spanish, both without papers, deny that most of those present are asylum applicants as the Madrid City Council assures. “I don’t know any,” says Spanish. After reviewing their respective lives, Romero releases a question:
“Do you know what was the best time since I am here?”
“It was the blackout night. The passengers also camped through this hall, I was bursting from people, not just a syntheson,” he replies. Romero says that that night he slept better because he felt that “again” was part of the same story as the rest of the people, and not one that is always written as “buried”, several meters below that of others.
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