Community in La Cañada Real: The women defending Spain’s biggest informal settlement
- Written by Brenda Chávez
- Edited by Ruby Russell
- Illustration by Tanya Teibtner
For decades, Moroccan immigrants have called La Cañada Real home. Now, real estate speculators are closing in on the informal settlement. Authorities are starving the community of basic infrastructure and demolishing homes. But women are pushing back against eviction and uniting against oppression from outside their community and within.
Earlier this summer, a Moroccan women’s association in one of Europe’s biggest informal settlements was preparing to open a communal laundry. They had spent months working to acquire a washer and a drier, as well the 12,000-euro solar generator to power them. The laundry was to ease women’s domestic workload and give them another reason to gather and meet at the Tabadol premises – a structure cobbled together from salvaged wood, metal and plastic sheeting, with bright splashes of color from repurposed advertising hoardings.
And then a fire broke out. It burned all night and took nineteen fire units to extinguish. The Tabadol building was reduced to ashes, along with the laundry, and stacks of baby mattresses and clothing ready to be donated to families. A neighboring home and a scrap metal warehouse were also destroyed. Five other homes were damaged.
No one was physically harmed. But fires like this are becoming ever-more common as piles of uncollected garbage fester under the sun and the authorities’ neglect. No one is claiming arson, but the destruction of homes and infrastructure here conveniently aligns with the interests of local authorities and property developers.
La Cañada Real, home to some 8,000 people according to the most recent census in 2012, is divided into six sectors on the outskirts of Madrid. Some look like suburban neighborhoods with regular houses, while others are dominated by shanties constructed from materials salvaged from the dump. Sectors 4, 5 and 6 sectors are the poorest, but only Sector 6 – where Tabadol is based – has no paved roads or power supply. Condemned by politicians and the media for drug dealing that happens along its southern edge, the whole community is smeared as criminal and delinquent. “What is the sixth sector’s problem? We’re Moroccans and Gitanos,” Houda Akrikez says dryly.
Houda, a 38-year-old single mum of three, is the director, heart and the soul of Tabadol, a tiny association that was founded by seven women in 2010 to understand why their community was being targeted for evictions – and to push back. “This situation is abandonment due to class, origin, and structural racism,” she says.
"This situation is abandonement due to class, origin, and structural racism."
Over the last decade, new urban developments have sprung up around La Cañada Real. Property developers’ brochures blot out the 15-kilometer strip of self-built homes with a cloud-shaped icon. Many believe it’s only a matter of time before Sector 6 is cleared. But for the women of Tabadol, it remains home: a community they will defend as long as they can. They campaign against evictions and the withdrawal of utilities, and at the same time work to improve the lives of residents by helping them to find work and navigate bureaucratic processes, and by organizing training events to gain skills or to understand their legal rights.
From makeshift village to contentious settlement
By 2017, there were nearly 3,000 people living the Sector 6, including more than 1,200 children.
People began settling in La Cañada Real in the 1980s. Dotted with cottages and family gardens, it was still being used as a livestock trail until 2011. Houda’s family arrived in the mid-1990s. For years, her father had worked construction jobs in Saudi Arabia and various European countries, sending money home to Morocco. Then, in 1994, he bought a plot of land in La Cañada. Houda says he worked long days for a construction company; after each shift, he worked on the home he was building for his family, who joined him the following year.
“La Cañada was like a village with wheat fields, orchards and sheep. It was wonderful,” recalls Houda, who was eight years old when they arrived. She says her mother was a “savior” for families coming from Morocco after them, running the home Houda’s father built as a kind of welcome center for new arrivals: “She welcomed them and supported them. She said to us, ‘Bring them home. Here is shelter.’”
Sector 6 grew as more Moroccan families arrived, both directly from Morocco and, increasingly, from elsewhere in Spain. “In recent years, with the rising price of housing in Madrid, there has been a powerful call effect,” Houda says. “Also, the foreign population tends to create communities. It is why this sector has become the largest of all.” By 2017, there were nearly 3,000 people living the Sector 6, including more than 1,200 children.
Houda says her father paid property taxes until 2010, when the authorities withdrew the legal status of homes in the area on the basis that it was classified as rural land and residential buildings were not permitted. “Now, the government says we can’t be here,” Houda says. Because homes in La Cañada were self-built without observing building codes or urban planning regulations, residents have no certificates of occupancy and cannot get service contracts water, sewage or electricity. Self-made connections are one of the few ways to obtain electricity and water. But the irregular status of housing also affects residents’ entire status in the country: to apply for a residence card, you need a valid address – meaning the process is out of reach for residents of La Cañada.
For Houda’s parents, the final straw came in October 2020, when energy company Naturgy cut off Sector 6’s power, claiming the network was overloaded by indoor marihuana plantations run by drug gangs. Her father calls regularly, asking about any progress with getting the community’s power supply back. “He came to Europe because human rights were guaranteed, unlike in Saudi Arabia,” Houda says. “The myth had fallen apart when the power supply was cut off,” Houda says.
Taking back power
Energy poverty affects women in particular. Without domestic appliances or hot water, women’s domestic workload increases. Without electric refrigeration, they must shop for food almost daily to prevent it from spoiling. There is no public transport and the nearest grocery stores are a 45-minute walk away, over wasteland, across a highway and through an underpass that is often flooded. “This requires a lot of physical effort. We have to walk a lot. Power outages are related to gender violence because women suffer the most,” Houda says.
Tabadol gained widespread attention for its efforts to get the community’s power supply back. The association organized public protests in Madrid that made their situation and enlisted NGOs to support their cause. They made media appearances, requested solar panels from NGOs and participated in studies on the impacts of energy poverty in La Cañada. Yet despite demands from NGOs working in La Cañada and from the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Housing, which highlighted the severe consequences of energy poverty on the population, some 4,500 residents are still living off-grid and few can afford to install private solar generators.
When Tabadol’s protests failed to get the power back on, the women became frustrated – and men in the community lost faith in the women-led campaign. “At first, they thought it was a good idea to raise our voices,” Houda says. “But then they started to turn against us: ‘What’s the point of your demonstrations and meetings?’ they asked – until it turned into a major confrontation between women and men.”
Now, the women have adapted their activism. “We talk in a subtle way to not alarm men,” Houda says. They are still working to get the power supply back, but now focus on initiatives like Luz ya para Cañada Real which is fighting on bureaucratic and administrative level, “instead of publicly shouting and demanding,” Houda says.
Houda is one of the few Moroccan women in Sector 6 who doesn’t wear a hijab. One woman who arrived recently told Houda she hadn’t worn a hijab until she moved to La Cañada, where and she felt compelled to by the more traditional religious community here. And even Houda – a community leader proud to have been a raised a feminist – has come under pressure from within her family.
Houda, her two teenage daughters and her two-year-old still live in the family home her father built, along with her sister, bother and their families, making up a household of 14. Living with extended family and sharing childcare is part of what makes her activism possible – even with a two-year-old to look after. “There are many times I do everything with her attached, rushing home, looking for a way to cook, do laundry, or whatever, finding a way to survive,” she says. But often she leaves her youngest daughter with her sister, a neighbor, or her mother, when she comes to visit.
Yet family life is not always harmonious. Houda says her brother has insulted and even hit her for not wearing a hijab, for being a divorced woman or for working alongside men. “Everyone told me I was right – but sabr,” Houda says. Sabr, meaning in Arabic “patience” – or as Houda translates the term, “hold on” – signifies perseverance, steadfastness and resilience. But in Houda’s experience, it can also mean holding your tongue. “I’m sick of the word,” she says. “Sabr because he is your brother, or because he is your neighbor, or because he is your uncle. Men don’t hold on… I raise my three daughters not to tolerate any injustice, in the belief that sabr word doesn’t exist.”
Solidarity and empowerment
Houda says she gets her determination from her mother – a “super woman” who raised eight children while also supporting her wider community: “Because of her, I decided to be what I am and fight against the injustices we experience.” And the mutual solidarity of the women in her community is at the heart of her activism.
Immigrant women often lack language skills, reducing their chances of employment and making them more dependent on their children, or on husbands who may prefer to keep them at home. “There is a need for female empowerment,” Houda says. Yet it is often the women in the community who are most ambitious. “Some girls want to advance, study, and have better lives,” she says. “Many men stand after work in the corner doing nothing. They receive some help from NGOs and don’t want anything else.”
Houda has created a women’s WhatsApp group to share opportunities, activities, ask for help, share problems and find solutions and share good news away from the male gaze. “We also explore ways to reach women without harming them, using excuses such as visiting their homes or having a gathering,” she says.
Earlier this year, before the fire, Houda invited Gazan activist Jaldia Abubakar to talk about the ongoing genocide. “Her population is being eliminated – but resisting like us. We learn from them,” Houda said, introducing her guest. Women sat in a circle of mismatched chairs that, like the materials used to build the space, had been salvaged from a nearby dump. Some brought homemade sweets. Most brought their kids.
"[The Gazan] population is being eliminated – but resisting like us. We learn from them."
Jaida gave an hour-long presentation and then a lively discussion began. The audience had many questions – not least about what they could do to help. When the Atlas earthquake hit in September 2023, they collected basic goods and clothes, and Houda herself drove them to Morocco. Now the group wanted to support people in the occupied Palestinian territories.
Jaida had a question for them, too: “I can’t go back to Gaza because I don’t have a place to live. But what are you doing here?” A women replied, “We are poor. We can’t live well in Morocco. Only the wealthy people can.”
When the meeting wound up, the women hugged Jaldia in warm solidarity and went home to their families. It was almost lunchtime, and the men would be returning from the mosque. Houda would drive Jaldia to her next appointment before meeting her daughters.
Her eldest is 16 years old and wants to study law. “She is very aware of justice,” Houda said proudly. The second, now 14, wants to be a vet. Walking to the car, Houda pointed to a bony dog covered in sores lapping water from a muddy puddle. “This is why my daughter wants to take care of animals,” she says. “She’s been secretly feeding and caring for a greyhound from the Gitano community. She saved its life. She confessed – feeling bad for not having said anything to me,” Houda says. “I laughed.”
Community and resilience
It’s not just a lack of affordable housing in Madrid and elsewhere that brings families to La Cañada – they come to be part of a community.
Three months later, the site of Jaldia’s talk is now an expanse of charred ground. After recovering from the shock, the women are again showing resilience. Houda is seeking another site for their association, as well as appliances and support for a new laundry. But the community is under constant pressure. The Madrid authorities regularly send bulldozers guarded by police to demolish homes. They deliberately leave ruins on the land to make it more difficult for residents to rebuild. Some neighboring houses are now completely isolated and surrounded by rubble.
In 2017, Madrid’s City Hall, under its first progressive government in 25 years, achieved a commitment with municipalities and civil organizations to resolve problems in the first, second, and third sectors, which are inhabited mainly by Spaniards. Known as the Regional Pact, it aimed to improve roads and connect them to regular water, power, mail and bus services. Local authorities also appear committed to regularizing some houses in these sectors if modifications are made to comply with building standards. The most vulnerable families from the fourth, fifth, and sixth sectors are to be relocated – though only the Sector 6 is to be completely dismantled.
Those, like Houda’s family, who bought the land on which they built their homes, or who bought homes built in La Cañada, have been litigating for years, trying to prove their ownership rights with the legal documents and evidence of taxes paid, to try to keep them. Tabadol advises them in this process and connects them with legal help.
The Madrid authorities say residents whose homes are demolished are to be relocated to better, legal, housing. But families don’t know where these homes will be what they will cost. Some Gitano families who were evicted have returned because they couldn’t store the scrap metal they make a living on. Former neighbors have also told Houda they were moved to distant neighborhoods outside Madrid, to rent small flats they can’t afford. And because these flats are only designed for small family units, the move means losing social structure by which extended families look after one another.
It’s not just a lack of affordable housing in Madrid and elsewhere that brings families to La Cañada – they come to be part of a community. And just as Houda’s mother helped those finding their feet a generation earlier, so Houda continues to help new arrivals and those displaced by fire or evictions. Marginalized, criminalized, under-served and under threat, life in Sector 6 is hard. But for many, it’s the one place they have found a foothold and the communal support that makes life possible. And new families keep coming.
About the author:
Brenda Chávez is an investigative, data and solutions journalist working on the intersection of sustainability, human rights and supply chains, and committed to journalism for social and environmental transparency.
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