Madrid perfectly reproduces polarized Spain. The same one that the master Goya captured totally confronted in his work Duel with clubs and that, two centuries later, will be measured again, in this case at the polls, this 28-M. A country of extremes whose main exponents in the capital are the districts of Salamanca and Puente de Vallecas. One to the north, another to the south; one with a net income per household of more than 60,000 euros and another that barely exceeds 27,000 euros; one white-necked, another blue; one who votes mostly to the right, another to the left.
In one, the popular ones always reap their best results in the city. In the other, the hegemony of the left has been consolidated with the irruption of Ahora Madrid in 2015. And in both districts each formation gathers, respectively, more than 40% of the vote.
It's not by chance. The differences are obvious just by setting foot on the street. The metro exit to the Velázquez station, in the epicenter of Salamanca, is lined with restaurants, fashion boutiques and accessory stores. While the mouth of Puente de Vallecas is ambushed by two betting shops on the even sidewalk and one more, next to a pawn shop in case despair drowns until you spend what you don't have, in the odd one.
The regulation of gambling halls approved in the current legislature has arrived late. Several years late. When the virus has already been inoculated that squeezes the residents of the most depressed areas of the capital who randomly trust the economic outlet that they cannot find in the world of work.
This is extracted from the data of Cáritas and the National Institute of Statistics (INE) that agree that, from 2003 to 2021, the income of the richest people of Madrid has risen by more than 5% while that of the poorest has decreased more of 20%.
Madrid has, in fact, one of the widest gaps between rich and poor in the entire State. The 10% of households with the highest income in the city have an average annual income of 113,920 euros. On the other hand, the 10% of households with the lowest income have 6,280 euros per year.
The nerve that unites this gap between north and south is the M-30. And your flow is another indicator of these differences. While in the morning rush hour the traffic jams occur in a northerly direction, where the vast majority of business centers come together, at sunset the traffic jams on the way home occur in the opposite direction.
The data draw two different societies for which the M-30 acts as a spatial barrier. A division that is perpetuated after the City Council has again broken its promise to demolish the last concrete scalextric in the city, precisely in Puente de Vallecas. An overpass that gathers 26 lanes in a single point —6 for buses— and 4 crossings for as many changes of direction as a border interchange.
This stagnation of inequality favors the polarization of the vote. Each district has maintained its respective ideological position for decades. Taking the last municipal elections of 2019 as an example, the three right-wings —the sum of PP, Cs and Vox— achieved in Salamanca almost 70% of the votes to just 29% of the sum of the left —Más Madrid, PSOE and IU Madrid on foot. A distribution inversely proportional to that of Puente de Vallecas with 68% progressive votes against 30% conservative ballots.
Only the 2021 regional elections were an exception when, in the midst of a pandemic, Isabel Díaz Ayuso managed to sweep the vast majority of the city's districts.
Both by inhabitants and by extension, Puente de Vallecas could be an independent municipality like Getafe, Leganés or Alcorcón. One more in the Madrid red belt, where the president of the Community has proposed to scratch votes to extend her dominance under the slogan "it is the management of the left that causes poverty." But is not. The Vallecano district belongs to the capital where, with the exception of the legislature of Manuela Carmena (Now Madrid), the right has governed for several decades without the trend having changed. Not even in this legislature in which the popular mayor, José Luis Martínez-Almeida, has increased investments in the southern zone by 31%.
"The deficit accumulated over decades cannot be fixed with an electoral patch," denounced the neighborhood associations included in the FRAVM and which, in recent weeks, have taken to the streets several times for reasons as diverse as the proliferation of ghost kitchens, the scarce repopulation of damaged trees or the abandonment of street cleaning.
Issues for which the neighborhood and associative fabric denounces a "progressive abandonment" of taxpayers who seem "not to have the same needs for public facilities as those in wealthy neighborhoods" and which, by extension, aim to perpetuate this polarization between the two 'Madrid' that coexist facing each other in the same capital.
