A flea market where everything costs €0 may sound like a utopia, but in Puerta del Ángel it’s already a very real Sunday outing. Estoy en la basura began in 2020 as an almost clandestine project: to document all the clothes, furniture, and items in perfect condition that Madrid discards on the street every day and that could be useful to someone else. From that obsessive gaze at dumpsters and building entrances has now emerged a free flea market open to the public where anyone can take home clothing, small furniture, and household items rescued just before they ended up in the trash.
Sandra, the person behind the project, began recording these scenes and sharing them on Instagram, until she realized she was actually highlighting a structural dynamic: the city discards clothes, furniture, and objects that could still have a long useful life. So she decided to create this alternative way of acquiring things.
Looking at objects in a different way
The project’s philosophy could be summed up in one sentence: any object can be valuable; it depends on the eyes with which you look at it. Value isn’t determined by price, but by how useful or desirable it might be to someone; that’s why seeing a table, a lamp, or a jacket abandoned on the sidewalk makes you angry—not because of the object itself, but because you know that somewhere there’s someone who could be using them.
Behind the photos and objects lies a very diverse community, one that’s hard to pin down with a single label. Participants include people in precarious situations who need access to free items, creatives looking for materials to reuse or transform, professionals finding useful resources for their work, and also people who, without a specific need, simply connect with the idea and join out of curiosity.
What they all agree on is that shared intuition that the value of things isn’t fixed, and that reusing shouldn’t be a rarity or an “alternative” gesture, but an everyday possibility. The €0 flea market is the physical embodiment of all that: if there’s already a community and a digital practice, why not bring it all together in one specific place, at the same time, to see what happens?
On May 17, at El Girasol, 68 Caramuel Street (Puerta del Ángel), anyone can come by and take clothes, small furniture, and other salvaged items, without paying anything and with no requirements other than respect for the space and for others.
