Who benefits from Lavapi¨¦s¡¯ new ¡°cool¡± designation?

Hotels, restaurants, bars, theaters, community gardens, vibrant cultural centers... this is just one side of Lavapi¨¦s, a Madrid neighborhood that is contained within the larger barrio of Embajadores. The area has just been selected by Time Out as the top choice on its list of ¡°50 Coolest Neighborhoods in the World¡± after surveying over 15,000 people.

But that funky side coexists with other, more complex realities: gentrification, outdoor binge drinking (known as a botell¨®n in Spanish), bed bug infestations, and a draconian housing market.

When you label a city area as ¡®cool,¡¯ it becomes a brand

Javier Gil, sociologist

Two figures illustrate the disparities to be found in Embajadores: it is one of the Madrid areas where the price of housing has seen the sharpest increases (over 21% in the Centro district, which includes Embajadores); it is also the area with the lowest household income ¨C just over €23,800 a year according to city statistics ¨C in the entire so-called ¡°central almond¡± of Madrid, which comprises seven districts.

Lavapi¨¦s runs at two different speeds. The fast lane is on Argumosa street, with its pricey sidewalk caf¨¦s and alternative-chic tapas bars. And then there is Oso street, where a Senegalese street vendor died in March of a heart attack. Many of the city¡¯s vendors live in the area, and Mame Mbaye¡¯s death triggered a wave of protests that resulted in torched vehicles and trash containers, and a police operation to restore public order.

¡°When I arrived in Lavapi¨¦s as a student, in the late 1970s, we were all from other parts of Spain,¡± notes the photographer Marivi Ibarrola, who is showing a selection of images titled De Lavapi¨¦s a la Cabeza. The exhibition portrays Lavapi¨¦s in the 1980s, when the streets were overrun by drugs and crime. Ibarrola, who still lives here, illustrates through her photography work how ¡°the most conservative customs coexist with avant-garde movements¡± in Lavapi¨¦s.

In the 1990s the neighborhood morphed into a magnet for wholesale establishments that pushed out many of the local mom-and-pop stores. Then, in the 2000s, the low prices and good location drew a wave of immigrants: at one point, the foreign-born population of Lavapi¨¦s was 35%. These days, one out of every four residents is originally from Bangladesh, Morocco, Senegal, Italy, France, the United States...

The affordable rent also began attracting actors, movie directors, journalists, non-profits, alternative political movements and squatter groups, all of whom left a mark and created a halo of modernity.

¡°In Embajadores, and especially in Lavapi¨¦s, we are seeing several processes taking place simultaneously: a property bubble, ¡®touristification¡¯ and gentrification,¡± says Javier Gil, a sociologist who specializes in housing and is a member of the Madrid tenant association Sindicato de Inquilinos de Madrid. ¡°The crisis stopped the gentrification process a little, but since 2013 it has been speeding up again. The direct consequences are a transformation of the area, the eviction of part of the original population, and the rising value of land and buildings.¡±

Ana B., 35, was forced to leave her apartment in the summer of 2017: ¡°I was paying €750 a month and my lease was up for renewal, but my landlord told me to leave. He owns the entire building. A few months earlier my next-door neighbors had left, the owner refurbished the apartment ¨C which is much smaller than mine ¨C and rented it out for €1,100 a month,¡± she recalls. Ana searched for another place in the same neighborhood, where she had lived for the better part of a decade, but was forced to look elsewhere because of the prohibitive prices.

Gil warns about public aid for building restoration: ¡°If you give out money but fail to add a clause prohibiting the sale of the building for the next 20 years, what you are doing is encouraging speculation,¡± he says. City officials have just excluded the neighborhood of Embajadores from the designation of ¡°urban regeneration preference area,¡± which is a requisite to apply for building restoration subsidies. Neighborhood associations were shocked at the decision, because they feel that there is still a vast amount of ¡°old and substandard housing¡± despite recent improvements.

¡°When you label a city area as ¡®cool,¡¯ it becomes a brand,¡± says Gil. ¡°It is a symbolic construct that is not tied to objective quality-of-life markers, but which ends up creating a rhetoric that legitimizes urban expulsion. The idea is that since this place really rocks, it is normal that some people should leave. It¡¯s like not everybody has the right to live here.¡±

English version by Susana Urra.