Madrid Airport: Hundreds in 'serious' condition

Hundreds of people, some of them with jobs, sleep every day at Madrid airport, in a “delicate and serious” situation to which unions, non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and the Spanish Ombudsman's Office have drawn attention.

The successive calls for attention were joined by publications on social media, which denounced corridors in the terminals of Spain's largest airport with hundreds of people sleeping or, more recently, being evicted to places with fewer travelers.

At the same time as they have become the focus of news and social media, the hundreds of people sleeping at Madrid airport have also become, in recent weeks, the protagonists of an exchange of blame between various administrations – that of the public company that manages the space (AENA), the national and regional governments and the local administration.

According to studies by the union ASAE — Alternativa Sindical AENA/ENAIRE (which represents AENA workers) and an NGO linked to Caritas, between 400 and 500 people sleep at Madrid airport every day.

The NGO's study, published by the newspaper EL Pais last week, revealed that 38% of these people leave in the morning to work and return to the airport at night, where they sleep, as they are unable to access a house or room.

The majority are men (78%) and 74% are foreigners, but only 21% of these have recently arrived in Spain, with 45% having lived in the country for at least five years, according to the same NGO study.

According to the ASAE union, there have always been people sleeping at Madrid airport – as happens in similar facilities in the rest of Spain and other countries – but the number had never been this large and, a decade ago, for example, there were no more than 40, on average, per night.

The union, like the NGO, highlighted that, unlike in the past, there are very diverse profiles among the hundreds of people who currently use the airport to sleep. In addition to those who work, there are those who live at the airport, those who are chronically homeless and have no income, people with mental health problems or alcoholism and other addictions.

A few weeks ago, AENA evicted most of the people who were sleeping in several terminals and brought them together in a single space, essentially offices and other services, which few or no passengers pass through on flights.

Confinement to a single space and the mixing of such diverse people trigger conflicts and create security problems, denounced a spokesperson for the AENA union, Antonio Llarena, who called for “these people to be removed from the airport, please, and taken to a dignified place”, as well as for the intervention of the ombudsman.

Ombudsman Ángel Gabilondo has been appealing to various entities and administrations since March. This week he visited the airport himself, at night, and again sent requests for information to Madrid City Council and the AENA administration.

The president of AENA, Maurici Lucena, acknowledged that the situation of these people is “delicate and serious” and has attributed responsibilities to Madrid City Council, considering that it is responsible for social intervention in the city and is responsible for responding to the problem.

The mayor, José Luiz Martínez-Almeida, has repeatedly stated that he does not have the authority to forcibly remove people from the airport, that a state infrastructure is at stake and that there is a lack of a census to determine in which cases the response falls to the municipality and the central government, such as, for example, situations of asylum requests.

The mayor has highlighted that, however, street teams and social intervention for homeless situations have also been working at the airport for decades and are currently in contact with 104 people, with 14 accepting help offered by the municipality in the last month.

Martínez-Almeida has stressed that social intervention depends on the will of the person, who cannot be forced to accept help.

The Spanish government has said that the response lies with the council and several voices have attributed blame to Almeida's poor management in the social area, accusing him of “pushing” people in vulnerable situations to the airport by not mobilizing sufficient resources.

In a spiral of accusations, the local authority has already suggested that it has occupied reception spaces due to the collapse of the state immigration and asylum services, which do not respond to requests in a timely manner.

After weeks of public exchanges of accusations, the president of AENA and the mayor of Madrid met on Thursday and reached a first agreement – ​​to ask an NGO to carry out a census of the people at the airport.

At the end of the meeting, the speeches were more calm and cordial than in previous days and both promised to work together to reach a solution.

Until then, AENA will use private security to control access to all airport terminals between 9:00 pm and 5:00 am, only allowing entry to people with plane tickets, parking tickets and workers.

The control has been in force since Wednesday and has already been questioned by the Ombudsman, although the company guarantees that it only went ahead after receiving an opinion from the State Attorney's Office.

Maurici Lucena explained that these controls are necessary to prevent the situation from “getting worse” and to “guarantee the activity” of the airport.

On the first night of controls, 150 people were prevented from entering and 170 were identified sleeping at the airport, according to data from the UGT union, which represents security guards.