Tourists and locals cope as trash piles up in Madrid
If you’re headed to Madrid anytime soon, you might want to pack extra-tough waterproof boots — and maybe a face mask. A garbage collectors’ strike over wages and layoffs has entered its second week, and trash is piling up along the streets of Spain’s capital city. Both tourists and locals are feeling — and smelling — the effects.
“I’m on my [way] to Madrid, but theyre on a garbage strike and apparently there’s like 2 feet of garbage on all the streets,” a woman from Ireland tweeted, adding the hashtag #goodtiming.
Many of the city’s most popular tourist draws, such as the Prado Museum and the Royal Palace, are in the heart of the city, as are many of its most desirable restaurants and nightlife hotspots. Business owners are using brooms and plastic bags in a never-ending attempt to keep trash at bay.
Some locals, used to disruptions in a country hard hit by economic recession, are taking the strike in stride. One resident hit the streets to film a tongue-in-cheek music video, posted Thursday on YouTube, called “Madrid, the most beautiful city in the WOOORLD!”
“Let me tell you a little bit about my beautiful hometown,” Laura Sales Candela says in English, smiling. “It is one of the most comfortable, charming, inviting cities in the world!” She goes on to extol the city’s cultural and artistic virtues while posing with or dancing around heaping piles of trash.
She's not the only one using dark humor to deal with the rubbish. Paul Hamilos, Madrid correspondent for the British newspaper The Guardian, tweeted a photo of a bra and a pig’s leg that lay just outside his apartment. Over the next few days, he reported, the leg moved around and then disappeared.
After the private trash contractors that take care of the city’s waste announced potential cuts in pay and staffing — more than 1,000 out of the city’s 6,000 trash-collector jobs and a pay cut for remaining workers — the collectors went on strike, joining their supporters in protest marches. Those have spilled over into occasional vandalism and scuffles that have led to 14 arrests, the Spanish newspaper El País reported.
City officials, meanwhile, are irritated that trash collection has stopped completely while the strike goes on, despite an agreement with the contractors that says at least 40 percent of trash pickup will continue even during a strike.
Ana Botella, Madrid’s mayor, and other officials pledged an increased police presence to deter violence and vandalism. Negotiations between the contractors and employees continue, with the sanitation workers’ union vowing to continue the strike “indefinitely” if the employers don’t revamp their plans.
In the meantime, the trash continues to pile up.
