Bus 32 links the center of Seville with the Polígono de Sur and the South Polygon with the center of Seville. 45 minutes, with normal traffic, separate La Campanawhere the lights shine that are paid for by the big brands that make up global capitalism and unify the aesthetics of the city centers, of one of the most impoverished areas of the country, an extreme case of social segregation.
In the center, full of tourists, one easily comes across the cleaning machines, you can walk without tripping over an excessive amount of plastic bags, of soda cans, of pipe bags.
In a playground, next to the Murillo neighborhood —the Polígono consists of six neighborhoods— The garbage accumulated this Thursday on the cornersuncollected. The same thing happened in numerous streets, as he was able to verify Public.
In these circumstances, people take care of their own environment. With the broom and the mop in the street, women, mostly, not men, sweep and scrub what they can. They keep the entrance to their house in order, at least, against all odds.
Thus, just one look is enough, as soon as you get off the 32 bus, to see that the State—City Hall, Board and Government— does not offer services of comparable quality and intensity in this place to those that exist in other areas of Seville.
“Lipasam does come. It is cleaned, but there are no trash cans,” says P., a resident of Polígono Sur, who does not want to give her name. “I live here“, provides as an argument for not giving it. P. works as a cleaner five days a week outside the neighborhood, she assures Public.
In the eye of the hurricane
The Polígono Sur is once again in the eye of the hurricane, after a shootout with heavy-caliber weapons took place last week following a drug “turnover”, according to the Government, and up to three police actions, in which they participated 300 police officers.
The Government delegate, Pedro Fernandez (PSOE), took stock this Thursday of police activity: eleven arrested for drug trafficking, illicit possession of weapons, electricity fraud and robberies, five weapons seized and 21 marijuana plantations, with some 5,000 plants, destroyed in the South Industrial Estate of Seville.
“In the face of violent events, we have kept a prudent silence so as not to participate in the media circus, which only seeks morbidity, nor in the political hubbub, which only seeks to offload responsibility on the adversary,” states the neighborhood platform We are also Seville, of which he is spokesperson Rosario Garcia.
“The violence we suffer is not the cause of the problems of the Polígono Sur, It is the consequence of political decisions that have been made over years and they continue to drink,” adds the platform.
The residents are already fed up with a “racist, anti-gypsy and aporophobic” way of looking at the neighborhood – in the words of the former commissioner of the Polígono Sur, the professor of Psychology at the University of Seville, Mar González. “There is intersectional stigmatization, it is the conjunction of both things, the gypsy population or those assimilated to gypsy, and the poor,” he adds.
“That does exist. That look above. I can’t say outside the neighborhood that I’m from here. Because if I say it from the start, they won’t catch you anymore. They analyze you without knowing you. That you are not like other people“, says P. in conversation with Public.
“No one has the courage to say that the ghettos [una palabra utilizada por el alcalde de Sevilla, José Luis Sanz (PP), durante la polémica posterior al tiroteo] are built with political will,” the researcher adds. Miguel Angel Vargaswho has lived and worked in Polígono Sur for four years.
“We have told the mayor,” P. assures, “that, to begin with, crime is also eliminated by giving proper jobs, not tin jobs to get a medal. They say: We are going to give a fund to give courses. Let them form and put it in big letters. But you never get that job. for a family to pull come on with his house. They give three-month contracts and that’s it.”
“It will not be possible,” Vargas analyzes, “to address the problem of gentrification and touristification without addressing the problem of the six neighborhoods.” [los más empobrecidos de la ciudad]. In order for us to have the tourism figures we have, Seville needs the Polígono Sur“.
“It is a question of the city, of the city model that Seville focuses on. For there to be a fair city there must be an approach to how Seville has been built and how it continues to be built. The dynamics continue to be reproduced,” says Vargas.
“Why hasn’t the comprehensive plan for the Polígono Sur worked? Because they need the Polígono Sur as a storage room in Seville. It is necessary to hide the poverty and exclusion generated by employment, housing, education, health and all the others they use”, adds the platform to which it belongs Rosario Garcia.
These theses are linked to the research of the geographer and professor at the Pablo de Olavide University. Francisco Jose Torreswhich summarizes in the job Polígono Sur in Seville, history of urban and social marginalization: “The current marked disadvantages [del Polígono] “rooted in the concentration of impoverished population that represented the original urban project: a social housing estate on the outskirts of the city, built fundamentally between the 60s and 70s.”
“Many humble families from different origins, evicted from historic neighborhoods or from towns, were relocated there,” the study continues. shanties, shelters or substandard housingwhich suffers with greater intensity the different moments of crisis and which, for long periods of time, is neglected by the Administration”.
“What there is is what there is, a neighborhood with a lot of people, there is a large majority of responsible people and there are a series of people who do not work“says P.
“The orientation of urban policy and the phenomena that are linked to the functioning of the housing market, speculative operations and residential possibilities (social planning and zoning, renovations and requalifications, gentrification and tourism, deterioration and marginalization…) manifest determining mechanisms in the consolidation of urban segregation,” analyzes the teacher in his work.
A police station in the neighborhood
Nobody denies the need for police presence in an area where drugs exist, where they are sold and bought with tremendous ease, and where, in recent times, marijuana plantations have proliferated. In fact, one of the fundamental demands of the neighborhoodwhich has been systematically breached by the Government of Spain, has been a National Police station in the neighborhood.
This was part of the Comprehensive Plan referred to by the platform We are also Seville, which, despite having created the figure of the commissioner of the Polígono Sur, which is still standing, and having achieved some successes, has not finished coming together. , above all, due to strategic resignations no longer persevere in the ongoing programs that were beginning to work.
The former commissioner asks: “Is everything a Police problem?” González responds: “Obviously not.” “Sometimes,” adds González, “it seems that we only talk about Polígono Sur to talk about the Police, and with a repressive gaze. It is not seeing the strengths of the neighborhood, it has many: there is the ability to coordinate and fight. “This neighborhood has been given all the cake in the world, but it is resilient and has fought to get ahead.”
“The police station was a big fightThere were rallies, demonstrations, everyone was united, professionals, neighborhood movement: we all asked for the police station inside the neighborhood and they took it outside out of pure ideology. They didn’t feel like putting it inside. The Police have to be present. There are problems with drugs, there is sale, cultivation of marijuana, there is. And all of this can only be combated if the neighborhood is strengthened and feels the alliance of the Police,” he adds.
“The change of perspective must be created. Everything has to do with the perspective we have on the neighborhood, those of the people themselves who are responsible for what happens. The city has to look at us in a different way and the neighborhood itself has to look at itself in a different way.. There are people accustomed to the multi-level exclusion in which they live. Las Vegas, Las Tres Mil, outsiders when they say Las Tres Mil do not recognize the dignity of the area,” González analyzes.
Inequality, walls
The Polígono Sur comprises six neighborhoods – La Oliva, Las Litanías, Murillo, Antonio Machado, Martínez Montañés and Paz y Amistad – and almost 9,000 homes – the area known as Las Tres Mil is the number of apartments in Murillo, one of the slums. Around 30,000 people live thereaccording to the registry figures, but it is difficult to know how many are actually alive.
Within the neighborhood, there are inequalities. “The La Oliva neighborhood presents a situation similar to that of other fully integrated or non-vulnerable urban sectors; almost all sections of Las Litanías, along with those of Paz y Amistad, reflect relative disadvantages, while neighborhoods such as Murillo, Martínez Montañés and Antonio Machado they welcome the most disadvantaged populations, at a serious and very serious level,” Professor Torres states in his study.
“To understand what is happening in the Polígono Sur it is key to understand how racism works. It is also a hierarchy of power, which is what allows neighborhoods like this to continue to exist. We need to address a key issue. And there is one: gypsies live ten years less on average, at the European level. We have a population in Seville that lives ten years less. That should not be accepted,” says Vargas.
“The Council of Europe defines anti-Gypsyism not only as that which exists towards Roma people, but also towards those who are perceived as gypsies“adds the researcher.
“The physical-spatial elements, social and community capital and citizen mobilization and institutional action have not fostered sufficient channels of transformation; rather they have been converging, with different orientations at each moment, in the perpetuation of the deterioration of the neighborhood, if not general, yes relative and focused and in the worsening of its stigma“, writes Torres.
One of the symbols of the isolation and segregation of the area is the wall and the train tracks that separate the Polígono Sur from the adjacent neighborhood of Bamiwhere the Virgen del Rocío is located, one of the largest hospitals in the country.
“Those physical walls are not as big to cross as the psychic walls, those of prejudice. The Polígono Sur is only like this because those walls exist that hide it from the rest of the city. The rest of the city sees the wall as a defense. This continues to increase exclusion and a great stigma,” says González.
In addition to the work processes and the alliance with the people, a key word for the former commissioner, “there are three big things to do that cost money, those that have to do with the budget. The police station still has time to put an accessory for 24 hours within the neighborhood; [unir el Polígono con Bami]which was the original project, and the rehabilitation of public housing, working at the same time on the urban and the human.
“This has been a very fighting neighborhood for everything it has. For having schools, health centers, a civic center. A commissioner, a coordination figure and they achieved it. When the administrations take steps back, and there have been some here, when you do not continue promoting comprehensive health work, When you stop making alliances in the neighborhood, you stop having control of what happens.. We are making a mistake,” emphasizes former commissioner González.
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