Limpia Madrid

Late at night when coming home from the pub, early in the morning on the way to a meeting, midday strolling to the shops, wherever I go there are people cleaning the streets.

Madrid is a very ordered city and whilst dropping litter and letting your dogs crap all over the pavements is usual behaviour the place is still very clean. This is because they employ a veritable army of cleaners. And they’re an equal opportunities employer. Whether it’s the garbage lorry doing the midnight rounds or brush and broom patrols during the day, both men and ladies are picking up the trash. We don’t have to separate our rubbish for recycling – the green revolution hasn’t quite hit yet (or it has and they’re ignoring it) – but there are bottle banks and paper silos dotted around various streets.

Trouble At Metro

Over the last week the Madrid Metro stations have started to build up with rubbish. By Christmas eve some of the larger stations on lines 3 and 8 were overflowing with discarded newspapers, fruit peel, and other general commuter detritus as the bins filled up and spilled over. The reason? We have an ‘indefinite strike’ by the cleaners (part of the UGT union) over pay and conditions.

Eventually, conditions got so bad that ‘black-leg’ cleaners were brought in before the mess became a health-hazard but this provoked scuffles between pickets and the freelance cleaners with one incident at Plaza Elíptica escalating to such an extent that Local Police officers were forced to intervene to disperse the brawling protesters. 

And today, caught on camera, we had a masked man pouring olive oil over the floor at the entrance barriers concourse of one station. The evening news reports showed the deed done followed by lots of travellers slipping, sliding and falling over as they tried to pass through the gates.