Cradles in classrooms: a walk through the poorest neighborhood in Spain

SevilleHe rides a bicycle. She looks at her phone. The child must be 3 or 4 years old. "It can't be the mother, can it?" I think. I ask Nati, who is walking beside me. She smiles. She wouldn't be surprised, even though that girl –she looks like a girl– might be at most 15 years old. In this area, the street names are litanies, that is, religious supplications: refuge of sinners, comforter of the afflicted, help of Christians. On these walls, divine proclamations take on another dimension. Nati explains to me that one of the concerns she had during the years she was a director at the school was precisely that the girls wouldn't stop studying, especially when they were asked for their hand in marriage. And this could be very early. At 11, at 12, at 13. "How did you do it?" I ask. "By trying to work with the families," she says. After a while, they call me: "Did you see what Nati is saying?" I approach. "Oh, yes, I forgot something," she says. And she lets slip, with a tone of normality: "Cradles were also placed in the classrooms." "What?" I say. "Yes, cradles, so they wouldn't leave.

Vulnerability and poverty are normally explained in figures. It can also be done here: 60% is the unemployment rate; 4,000 are the power outages in the last year; 7,400 euros is the average annual income. But in the coming hours we will see that poverty and marginalization are also images: a bus, a fan, a tampered-with engine. This is not an exhaustive X-ray. It is not an in-depth study. It is a walk through Polígono Sur in Seville. 150 hectares boxed in between the train tracks and the highway, where it is not known for certain how many people live, and which holds the sad record of being the poorest neighborhood in Spain. This is a walk through what is known by the nickname of Las 3,000 Viviendas. Waiting for the bus

It is a grid-like space where, very close by, there is the CAP, a drug addiction center, a gypsy association, and a Christian parish. In these few meters, the relatively new and clean facilities of the primary care center, clearly high people, gypsies playing music –who knows if to celebrate something–, and children participating in parish activities are mixed. “It seemed to me that it could be a good starting point,” says Alfonso. It is a scene that is surreal, decadent, and marginal. “Welcome to the city's backyard.” He is a member of the Plataforma Nosotros También Somos Sevilla, ofwhich also includes Nati, who is already retired but has worked all her life at the neighborhood school; Luisa, 63, who cleans houses, and Neiva, 33, who breaks all the stereotypes and statistics and has completed a master's degree in public policy after studying two degrees. She is the one who made the posters that plaster the neighborhood demanding the bus, which no longer arrives because the drivers report that they throw stones at them. “When they have problems in the center of Seville, they don't stop passing by,” says Neiva. It is difficult not to think of '47. Of Torre Baró's fight to have a bus. It was the year '78. Today, in Las 3,000 Viviendas, there are people who have to walk half an hour to reach the first point where there is a stop. With all that it implies for doing things as everyday as going to the supermarket or going to work.

Motors on bicycles

We are now in Martínez Montañés. It is known as "We also lie when we look for work – says Luisa –. There are houses that if they know we are from here they won't want us to clean".

The fan. "We also lie when looking for work –says Luisa–. There are houses that if they know we are from here they won't want us to come in to clean".

The fan

Leaving Martínez Montañés, Luisa meets a friend. I lend an ear and hear her talking about batteries: “I’ve already put them on the balcony. Two batteries, I’m not going without a fan this summer”. The neighborhood lives daily with power outages. But they emphasize to us that they prefer to call them blackouts: “Because we pay the bills”, they emphasize. Of the 365 days of 2025, only six had light for 24 hours. This is a city, and a neighborhood, that in the summer often reaches 40 degrees. They are collecting all the data and working to bring it to the European Parliament. An important problem with the apartments, apart from the electrical installation, is that it is not known who they belong to. Just as it sounds. “Here, the vast majority of the apartments were subsidized housing –explains Alfonso–, but there have been illegal transfers and the reality is that today there is no census of who exactly lives at each door”. This leads to apartments being dedicated to drug trafficking, mafias that have sold homes for 15,000 euros, and it is not known with certainty who the owner of each apartment is. 

17-M

There are no election posters and no rallies have been held. In this neighborhood, abstention in many places reaches 70%. In Martínez Montañés, it climbs to 85%. “The neighborhood is like this because the policies that have been implemented have determined it. Rather, the ones that haven't been implemented,” lament all four. Alfonso explains that the process often repeats itself: European money that is intended for neighborhood programs. This is channeled through NGOs that are not based there and end up carrying out programs without knowledge of the neighborhood's reality, without them lasting over time and without any control of the results. Alfonso speaks of two forces: those who fight to transform the neighborhood and those who work to destroy it. "And who are the latter?", I ask him. “You can imagine, the clans that profit from illegality”.

We head back to the car. “What do you like about here?”, I ask before leaving. “Here I have my five children and ten grandchildren – says Luisa –. And we still know each other. I can tell you all the neighbors' names.” “And haven't you thought about leaving?”, I ask Neiva. She is young, smart, educated. I don't know how to interpret her expression. I suppose she has considered it. “What I want – she says – is to change things”. Retracing our route, we pass by the dilapidated bus stop, the closed shops, the junkies walking around, and the uncovered garbage. I think of the bus, the fan, and the cribs. The images of a neighborhood that are also the Alfonsos, the Neivas, and the Luisas who fight to change it. We're almost there. The street sign indicates we are at Puerta del Cielo. It is the distance between divine promises and earthly shortcomings.