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“I went to withdraw money with the card and when I came here, they almost killed me”. The story of María del Mar is shocking. Six months ago, she was mugged three blocks from her home and has lived in a wheelchair ever since. "Pull the sock down," he tells this journalist while pointing to his right foot. When discovering this woman's ankle, you can see a scar of almost a span. On the other side of the leg he has another one just like it. Misfortune can take many forms. His are two rectilinear marks on the skin flanked by dots. The loot that the robber took was 20 euros and a mobile phone. Welcome to Carrús (Elche), the poorest neighborhood in Spain.
03206. That is the postal code that is worst off in the personal income tax returns collected by the Tax Agency. The latest data available is from 2019. Carrús, the working-class neighborhood in the north-west of Elche (Alicante) shows a gross income of 15,542 euros per year on average per person. At the opposite extreme is La Moraleja in Madrid, with 245,400 euros. These data include cities with more than 200,000 inhabitants, 100,000 personal income tax declarations or a total declared income of more than 2,200 million euros.
Also, Navarre and the Basque Country are left out of this classification because they have their own foral regime. Carrús has been in the lowest position for several years in a row and with little improvement. Between 2013 and 2019, their wealth only grew by 10%, compared to 84% variation in La Moraleja, or 99% in the Salamanca neighborhood, in the same period of time.
“The Bronx”
It is midday and the sun is beating down strongly on the streets of Elche. The Carrús neighborhood looks more like the setting for an Eloy de la Iglesia movie than 21st century Spain. No building is very tall, nor very new, nor especially beautiful. Three women chat relaxed in a corner. The oldest of them remains motionless in her wheelchair. The youngest does so leaning out of a window with bars and no glass.
—Excuse me, are you residents of the neighborhood?
—Yes, from the Bronx.
In case you weren't sure where you are, three words are enough to confirm it. "If Almodóvar wants to make his next film, let him come here," declares one of the three neighbors. Her interlocutors nod, resentful and impotent. “This is the worst area in all of Spain. I believe that we have beaten the 3,000 homes”, he says in reference to the famous —and dangerous— neighborhood of Seville. Indeed, Carrús wins by a landslide in poverty, at least on paper. The South district of the Seville capital has an average annual income of 34,440 euros gross per person per year, according to data from the Tax Agency.
Carrús Este housing blocks built during the Franco regime.J.S.
“No one helps us. Older people have been dying and there are hardly any working people left here. Here there are squatters who dedicate themselves... to their things. You know what I want to say?". Yes, it is intuited.
—Squatted houses, will you? You have whatever you want -says this neighbor.
—No, there aren't any. They have already squatted all of them - jokes Miriam, the youngest of the three.
Maria del Mar intervenes in the conversation to tell her story and leave her interlocutor's hair on end. On April 23 of this year, she went to withdraw money from an ATM near her house. It was 10 pm. "We were in the pandemic and there were no people on the street." After passing through the ATM, suddenly, "a drug addict" grabbed her by the neck. “I ran out of oxygen,” she recalls, and fell round to the ground in a bad way. Hence the ankle fracture.
Now, her mugger is in jail. There is no compensation because the thief had nothing to pay with. And if this story wasn't chilling enough, there's still a twist to come. The eldest daughter of María del Mar died on June 31, two months after the fatal robbery. “I couldn't go and bury my daughter because they had done this to me. My daughter has died at the age of 35... She went to bed and never got up. And I couldn't go to the funeral because of this crowd. For going to the ATM to get 20 euros”. His eyes mist up and his voice breaks, without breaking into tears.
The left ankle of María del Mar, after the robbery that almost cost her her life.J.S.
Mar has spent 30 of her 52 years in Carrús, but she was born in Elda. Her profession couldn't be more linked to this land: she was a discounter in a shoe factory. Router? "The skin, the good one, you have to reduce it to later be able to fold it," he explains. The work he did since he was 14 years old is now done by a machine.
His daughter Miriam, who is 21 years old and has never worked, was born in this neighborhood. “They have me waiting for regularization. They don't regularize me, they don't fix me, or anything. Look, I am without a window. They don't give us work either. You ask for help and it takes you a year and a half”. Mother and daughter prefer not to be photographed for this report.
—But regularization of what?
—These apartments belong to the Generalitat Valenciana.
The history of Carrús dates back to the 1950s, when the first wave of people moved to Elche to work in the shoe industry. They came mainly from Albacete, Murcia, the eastern part of Andalusia and other parts of the province of Alicante. Between the 1950s and the 1970s, more than 30,000 people came to this neighborhood to make footwear. Today signs from the Franco era still survive, from when most of the houses were built.
The second great wave has taken place in the last two decades with the arrival of thousands of immigrants from Eastern Europe, Morocco, South America and sub-Saharan Africa. Currently, in Carrús you can see skins of all colors and many languages that are not Spanish or Valencian are heard. Most of them are concentrated in the Carrús Este area, where Maria del Mar and her daughter Miriam live in a subsidized apartment.
A street in Carrús.J.S.
Katherina arrived in Elche 15 years ago from Russia. She doesn't live in Carrús, but she does work here and knows what's up. “Many immigrants come to this bar and most of them don't work. Clients from Morocco and Algeria drop their children off [at school] and every day, at the cafeteria. I tell you what I see. People with three, four, five children who are here all day”, explains this mother. She, on the other hand, has worked “all her life”.
“I don't know what they do. A person who doesn't work, doesn't have money and can't live, right? I don't know if they will give help or something, but you can't afford to spend all day in the cafeteria either,” he says, in very correct Spanish, although with a marked accent.
—What do you think it would take to improve this neighborhood?
—This can't be improved anymore.
Clandestine workshops and calinche
Every day, as evening falls, the retirees of Carrús meet at Parque 1 de Mayo to play calinche. It is a popular game from Levante, similar to petanque, where players throw their moneos (circular pieces of iron about three fingers in diameter) into a small wooden cylinder (the canut or calinche). A small tower of four or five coins is placed on the canut. Whoever manages to knock him down, throwing his coin from the other end of the track, takes the coins. It seems easy. It is not.
A group of retirees playing calinche in Carrús.J.S.
About thirty people surround the calinche track, while several players throw their monkeys. They are all Spanish men and they are over 50 years old, shooting below. In this game there is no defined technique. Unlike, for example, the javelin shooters, who all use a very similar technique, in the calinche each maestrillo has his booklet.
Carlos has been playing in this square all his life and, even so, every afternoon he continues to go down. He tells that he worked for 42 years in the shoe industry, when the workshops were scattered throughout the streets of Carrús. "Now all the factories are in Torrellano," he says. "All those blocks that are there in front were factories," adds Joaquín, another retiree gathered here.
Carlos has worked all his life in the shoe industry and lives in Carrús.J.S.
—Why do you think this is one of the poorest areas in Spain?
—It might be because there are a lot of older people, I don't know. And because not everything is declared, too. There are many people who are working and getting paid in the black. So of course, in the declaration we came out the poorest. But there are many hidden workshops here.
—Workshops?
—Of course, the shoes. And factories in little ships.
—And what about dealings?
—Here... yes, there is, from time to time. That's why the police are around here so much.
—Well, the drug is in all laos' -says another gentleman, full of reason.
Indeed, it is not uncommon to see unmarked white vans in Carrús and people carrying merchandise in large bags taken from the back of a store or home. None of these workers, asked by this newspaper, wanted to give statements.
“There are all sorts of people now. It's not like before. Before it was much calmer, ”laments Carlos. "From the Plaza de Barcelona to here, this thing that you don't see has been put on." The area covered by this description is basically Carrús Este. Despite everything, he has never had any problems with anyone.
Marina has grown up in Carrús and has not had to regret any incident. "I was here all my life and I went to live in Pla", that is, to the south of Elche. “When I was little this was great. For me it has been a marvelous neighborhood”, assures this 38-year-old leisure and free time monitor.
—Why do you think this is one of the poorest areas in Spain, year after year?
Marina confirms Carlos's theory.
—I think it's because of the underground economy. Shoe workshops have always worked like this.
Marina and her children Martín and Berta.J.S.
Marina, unlike the other interviewees, does not consider Carrús an unsafe place. “It is also true that we live in that area, up [the north of the neighborhood]. It's not the same as this area here [points to the southeast], which are older apartments where perhaps more immigrants enter. But the area above, where my mother lives and the cabbages are, we have never had any problems there”.
Afternoon falls in Carrús Este. The space where an hour ago retirees played calinche is now filled by dozens of people, most of them immigrants. Nobody wants to talk.
