The metaphor of Gaul that resists (and all that referential universe that is inherited from reading Asterix and Obelix) is scarce in Madrid. (The metaphor, to clarify, refers to those small redoubts of a past architecture that has not succumbed to the advance of modernity). Throughout the city, these contrasts can be counted almost on the fingers of one hand.
Some, perhaps like the Modern Madrid or that of certain one- or two-story houses scattered throughout the city, resisted. Others who also resisted (half-heartedly) were the neighbors of the self-styled Kingdom of Belmonte: a case with rare precedents and surely few post precedents.
Once upon an expropriation
It was the late 80’s, Madrid was growing as it is growing now, the city of the Great Trauma had been created with neighborhood labor, and the newspaper ABC published an article entitled New studies to eradicate the 19 pockets of poverty in Madrid.
The newspaper reported that the City Council planned to build 7,200 homes in Cerro Belmonte (in the district of Moncloa-Aravaca) to put an end to “urban deterioration, which in some cases is shantytowns and in others, substandard housing”.
What for the institutions was substandard housing for those who lived there was their home: land, some with large and well-equipped patios. A hundred homes to which the City Council had put a (low) price: 5.018 per square meter.
Faced with a situation of grievance, the neighbors of the neighborhood set in motion the machinery that would make their case resonate internationally. From hunger strikes to church lock-ins ending with a proclamation of independence.
Cuba takes action
A few months before reaching this situation, the neighbors contacted Cuba to request political asylum for Fidel Castro (the reason for contacting Cuba appeals to a diplomatic crisis with Spain).
The neighbors sent a letter to Castro which, according to ABC, described the expropriation as “unjust and speculative” and added that they hoped to find in Cuba the rights and justice that they were denied in Spain.
Fidel Castro’s response is recalled in the press articles dealing with the subject: 10% of the neighbors (about 20 people) flew to Cuba at the invitation of the Government. And in a four-hour speech, the Belmonte issue monopolized more than another 10% of the speech.
The request for help from the international community escalated so much that the neighbors even announced that they would ask the UN to recognize the neighborhood’s independence.
The referendum in Cerro Belmonte
The residents of Cerro Belmonte proclaimed their independence prior to the passage of a referendum that took place on September 5. The result: out of 214 neighbors, 212 voted yes.
And independence was achieved within a week.
The most immediate consequence was to endow the new and ephemeral country with symbols: a constitution was written, an anthem was composed, traffic was cut off in the adjacent streets, a flag was created and they even minted their own currency (the value of which, the Belmonteño, was 5,018 pesetas).
The case reached the pages or the screens of media such as Times Magazine, Der Spiegel or the BBC. The story had a happy ending for the neighbors and the pressures served so that, one, the City Council annulled the expropriations and, two, so that years later the price of the sale was renegotiated and the neighbors were rehoused in apartments in the Zone.