For a quick break and change of scenery, I walk fifteen minutes to Parque Santander, a public park that offers a walking and jogging path, a reflecting pool with fountains, and kids’ play areas with swings, slides, and stationary train engines. Children dart through jets of water. Basketball players sprint up and down the courts. Chess enthusiasts concentrate around tables. Gardens and eight-foot high walls teeming with plants provide tranquility. It’s now a lovely, welcoming space for the neighborhood but it didn’t get off to a rosy start.
In 2003, the president of the Community of Madrid, Esperanza Aguirre, returned from a trip to Japan where she saw golf putting greens in the city center. She decided Madrid needed some. Parque Santander would be the ideal spot, she thought. During an upgrade of the park to provide additional green space, recreation areas, and trees, she approved the installation of a golf driving range, holes, and ball catching nets thirty meters high. This contradicted the city’s approved plan to designate Parque Santander a green zone. Well, it would be green if one considered the astroturf. Soon, aluminum palm trees swayed over sweaty golfers and pavilions offered them shade. Golfers from around the city paid a fee to recreate there, an amount that those living near the park couldn’t afford. Most probably didn’t play golf anyway.
I learned the backstory of Parque Santander from my upstairs neighbor, Maimen. The two of us go to the movies and top it off with a beer in an outside café to discuss the movie and other important life matters. Maimen was the first person in our building to speak to us and make us feel welcome after we moved in. She knows a thing or two about Americans. She had married an American sociologist, lived in Los Angeles and Santa Clara for two years, and then with a Fulbright Fellowship received a master’s degree in librarianship from the University of Maryland.
One rainy morning, she and I went to a local indie theater to see a documentary about Parque Santander. She mentioned that she had appeared in it as had three main organizers of a community movement to get rid of the golf facilities. Before the movie began, I saw these people standing in front of the screen. They looked like regular folks whom I may have passed in the street without noticing.
Chamberí residents, led by the community organization Parque Sí en Chamberí, which aimed to turn the entire space of the former covered water reservoir built in 1915 into parkland, paraded on weekends in front of Parque Santander with protest signs. They visited school classrooms to ask kids to draw their dreams of a park. They organized workshops to create ideas for a park and held roundtables for politicians and neighbors. In Madrid’s district with the least amount of green space per inhabitant, they aimed to provide sports and recreational areas for residents, especially young people.
In 2006, the mayor put a stop to the golf area because the Community of Madrid didn’t have a legal license to develop an area for this purpose. The license he had already approved called for a public park. The Community of Madrid also received a negative report from a commission that protected the artistic and cultural heritage of the city.
Aguirre replied that this park with golf and paddle tennis was in the public interest and that they were creating new and advanced sports facilities that district residents wanted. With that, in 2007 the city council discarded the suspension and classified the park as a “general interest” and not a green zone. Therefore, it didn’t need to comply with the zoning laws for park space. Putting greens and driving ranges proceeded. At the inauguration of the new facilities, the president had to enter through the back door because crowds of demonstrators blocked the main entrance.
Almost every weekend for ten years despite rain and beating sun, Parque Sí en Chamberí activists pounded the pavement. Most Sunday mornings, they gathered at a table at the park entrance to talk to passersby. They added to their repertoire skits about the park.
Last summer, Fabio and I entered the park to play ping pong at one of the five tables and tennis on one of the twelve courts. The courts were so popular we had to sign up for a day and time. We had no idea of the energy, commitment, and passion residents had invested in making the park available to all.
In 2010, the Supreme Court of Madrid annulled the construction permit. In 2013, they declared the work illegal. In 2016, the court nixed the golf facilities. Aguirre had spent 50 million Euros on the project. Her right-hand person, the treasurer of the Community of Madrid, landed in jail. He had given the contract to build the facilities to his brother-in-law’s company without getting the legally required number of bids. In 2017, demolition of the golf course began and plans for a truly public park swung into action.
Fabio and I strolled through the park last weekend. Elderly folks worked up a sweat on the exercise circuit and people of all ages walked and jogged on the paths. Parents pushed kids on swings. Girls bounced on a trampoline. Soccer players raced over the fields. Adolescents sprawled next to fountains chatted and laughed. Vertical gardens added tranquility, beauty, and greenery.
Had it not been for those determined residents of Chamberí who fought for the park, aluminum palm trees fading from green to gray instead of trees might have shaded us. We would have heard less laughter, shouts to pass the ball, and parents calling after their toddlers. When I get discouraged about confronting political powers, I remember the dedication of the people I see on the street without recognizing who made a ruckus and took action to better our community.
What a refreshing article illustrating the restorative powers of persistent public pressure to create such a beautiful place.
And I must say Fabio’s wardrobe selection provides a fabulous complement in the way it accessorizes the floral pattern of the vertical wall!
Love when public officials decide what the populace needs. Dissenters and activists spring up like weeds through the asphalt.