In 2025, two films shot in urban peripheries, in communities existing on the economic, moral, and even aesthetic margins of modern society, coincided. On the one hand, there was José Luis Guerin's documentary—which won an award at the San Sebastián Film Festival— Stories from the Good Valley, set in the Vallbona neighborhood and, on the other hand, fiction City without sleep, which Guillermo Galoe from Madrid has filmed in Cañada Real, the largest informal settlement in Europewhere hundreds of families live just 15 kilometers from Madrid in shacks or houses without basic services – this has been going on for five years Some areas do not have electricity supply.

In recent times we have had plenty of chances to hear about the excellent Madrid as a paradise of "freedom" and the engine of economic growth in the state. The cracks have been evident for some time, especially during the pandemic, but it is not new that there is another Madrid, unequal and poor, which does not appear in grandiloquent speeches.