“The worst thing that can happen to you right now is losing your apartment,” Pepón Montero, co-creator of the series with Juan Maidagán, admitted to this newspaper a few weeks ago. Little Faith. The central plot of the second season, recently published on Movistar+, revolves around one of the issues that most afflict Spaniards currently: the real estate crisis. On this occasion, the protagonists of the fiction, played by Raúl Cimas and Esperanza Pedreño, return to their parents’ house after being kicked out of the rented apartment where they lived. From one day to the next they find themselves with all their belongings in boxes and have no choice but to leave their neighborhood to go to the suburbs. But it is not necessary to be a character in this comedy to suffer what is a social reality in our country.
“Buying a house in Madrid with a terrace or patio has become unfeasible after the pandemic. For the same price that costs at most a 50 square meter apartment with two bedrooms in the city, in Rivas I have a 100 square meter house with a patio and in better conditions”, explains journalist Elena Horrillo to ICON, who left the Madrid neighborhood of Vallecas, where she lived as a renter, to become an owner in 2021, after more than a year of trying to find something he could afford without having to leave town. Ana Medina lived in the center of Madrid, in Embajadores, with her husband and daughter until just a year ago, when she moved to Getafe because finding an apartment in that area with the features they needed — “we have a daughter, we both work a lot at home and my partner is a keyboard player (the pianos aren’t exactly small…),” she says — was impossible. “I felt like they were chasing me out of the city, I wanted to stay and I couldn’t”, admits this forty-year-old from Burgos who now lives in a spacious apartment with storage room and parking in an urbanization where her daughter goes alone to play with her friends: “We have a swimming pool in the summer, a gym, 130 square meters compared to the 70 where we lived before, and we can go out for a walk without being in the cloud of pollution of the city. I was very reluctant to leave, but now the dirt of the center of Madrid attracts the my attention. Fortunately, I am very happy with an initially forced change.”
A quiet life or a forced change?
These are not two isolated cases. It is increasingly common to meet someone who has moved, or is in the process of moving, from the city center to the suburbs or directly out of it. The sweetened version of this change is the search for a quieter life, away from the madding crowd, as the English writer Thomas Hardy would say. But the relaxed lifestyle that many real estate agencies now sell as the ideal to aspire to is not usually the main factor that leads many people and entire families to leave the city in which they live, with its routines and circles of support.
“When we visit the areas where we are looking for a house – Paracuellos del Jarama, Colmenar Viejo, Galapagar, Collado-Villalba, Hoyo de Manzanares, even Alpedrete and Colmenarejo – my partner and I have the feeling of ‘what have we lost here’. If we look at apartments there it is because we have no choice, but it is not the place we would choose to live or raise our children. It makes us dizzy and sad to be forced to “Go to a place that we did not choose of our own free will and with which we feel no connection”, recognizes the journalist Helena Poncini, who lives for rent in the San Blas-Canillejas neighborhood, in Madrid, with a contract that will expire in a few months: “We like our neighborhood, our children go to school close to home, I am close to my mother’s work, and we are well connected. But now we will have our third child, this apartment is too small for us and there are no three bedroom options. storage room and parking that we can’t afford either in this area or anywhere else in the city.”
Increasingly hostile urban centers
It is true that the pandemic and confinement have shown the value of having outdoor spaces such as terraces, patios or gardens where you can sunbathe and breathe fresh air when going out is not an option. Since covid-19 appeared, more than 100,000 Spaniards have left the city to live in the suburbs. Thus, 81% of small municipalities located less than 15 minutes from a city with more than 50,000 inhabitants have gained population in recent years, according to the analysis of the Ministry for Ecological Transition and data from the INE Demographic Challenge on residential changes over the last decade. Iago Fernández, journalist specializing in audiovisuals and director of Fina Estudio, is one of those Spaniards who left the center of Madrid, living in Conde Duque, for a village life that he wouldn’t change for the world: “We moved to the mountains in the north-west of Madrid when my daughter was two years old, now she’s five, and I don’t think of returning to the center of Madrid. The large urban centers are ceasing to be attractive even for young people, let alone for a family. We are the lucky ones to be here in the middle of nature and at the same time very close to the city for when we have to go to work, meet friends or enjoy what only the city offers.”
Belén Leiva, a public sector consultant, agrees that the center of Madrid has become a hostile place for both adults and children: “I lived for many years in Lavapiés and Alonso Martínez, when there was still neighborhood life and you could go shopping at the market or meet your usual neighbours. But that no longer exists. Now there are no neighborhood shops and every day you only meet different tourists.” Leiva, who is the mother of two young children, confesses that the urban education she gives them is very important to her: “I want to convey the message that they can walk, cycle… that the road is theirs and they are masters of their destiny. This is why we recently moved to Tres Cantos, because it is a place that combines all the services and urban planning designed for safety with neighborhood life. If we put the children in the car and take them from one place to another, the message we give them is that they will be directed for their whole lives and they will not be autonomous. And I want my children to understand the city as something that empowers them and does not limit them”.
Like a perpetual weekend
As concluded by the II Depopulation Barometer developed by the España Habitar Foundation, the number of people leaving the cities and returning to live in the municipalities of Castilla y León has increased by 5% in the last two years, reaching 16.2% of the total residents. Julia Nowicki left Madrid three years ago to live in Los Ángeles de San Rafael (Segovia) with her husband: “For a long time we fantasized about having a house in the countryside for the weekends. But over time we realized that we no longer had many plans in the city, we rarely went to parties or dinners, and our free time was very much focused on going out into nature.” That’s why they decided to change their plans and look for a permanent home instead of something just for getaways. Since 2022 they have lived in a chalet with a beautiful garden accompanied by their two greyhounds: “We have gained in quality of life. We are in a country house and living there is like being in a perpetual weekend getaway. Time passes differently. A few hours here give the feeling of two days of holiday. This compensates for the cons that may be there, which are there. We don’t have many transport options for Madrid and this forces us to plan more and take the car almost everywhere. Plus the temperatures are lower, and although it is appreciated in the summer, it is harsh in the winter.”
That of Teresa Cobo from A Coruña is a very similar case. Since she left the Alvarado neighborhood of Madrid to move with her husband to San Martín de Valdeiglesias, she feels as if she is living in an eternal summer: “I don’t want to go on holiday anywhere anymore.” Cobo paid 750 euros for a three-bedroom apartment with a terrace. “A deal,” he admits. But they both had remote jobs and the idea of going to live in the countryside had been in their minds for some time: “When the confinement ended and our landlord wanted to increase our rent to 900 euros, we took seriously the possibility of looking for houses in the Sierra Oeste of Madrid because it was the cheapest place.” Eventually they found one and began a job that lasted two years. “We bought a ruin and wanted to rebuild it with respect and care,” says Teresa Cobo, who although she misses the Maravillas market, would not return “to the center of Madrid at all.” Now he has two children, “they grow up much better in the village”, and a local craft and wine shop that has opened next to his house. Although he has a big but, the nearest hospital is 45 minutes away: “Leaving or having an emergency is a real hassle so far away.” Cobo also recognizes that there isn’t much gastronomic variety: “But this is also a good thing because by eating at home you save a lot of money. Everything has its pros and cons. Now I enjoy life with my children in a more peaceful way.”
A constant threat: rising rents
Begoña Lorenzo also left the center of Madrid a few months ago – she was renting in the Huertas neighborhood – because she was paying “an indecency” (more than half her salary) for a house with a sloping floor (“if I put the marbles in the living room they would reach all the way to the bathroom”), without heating and without furniture. “I lived in constant fear of my rent going up and saw sales prices rising in the suburbs. So when I saw the opportunity to buy an apartment in Carabanchel I didn’t hesitate. Now I pay half of what I paid for rent in writing. The apartment is infinitely better and newer,” he explains to ICON. Economically, he says, it was the smartest thing: “My fear turned out to be true, as soon as I left they increased the rent on the Huertas apartment and, right now, a house in Carabanchel like mine costs around 100,000 euros more than when I bought it a year ago.” However, socially and culturally, he feels that it was not the best choice: “It is difficult for me to go to the center (the subway and bus always arrive at the top, and this is almost the beginning of the line, and the taxi up here is prohibitive). In the end laziness prevails and the plan to leave the neighborhood has to compensate a lot. If I could, I would have continued to the center, but it was an unbearable effort.”
Something very similar ends up happening to José Ramón and Berta, the protagonists of Little faith: Their last chance to stay in the neighborhood disappears when the lifelong friend who would have rented his apartment to them discovers how much tourists pay. A practice, that of holiday rentals, which does nothing but encourage the expulsion from the more central neighborhoods of many residents who live with rental contracts and which parties like Más Madrid are fighting to regulate, given that in Madrid alone there are more than 15,000 illegal tourist homes. And so, with no other choice, Berta and José Ramón end up looking for the apartment where Christ lost his flip-flops, wondering: “How did we end up here?”
