When the light went out, the radio was turned on: the day dozens of neighbors gathered around a transistor to batteries

A group of people concentrates on a side of a central square of Madrid hours after the blackout. People around them come and go, gather in bus stops or make long lines to buy canned food; But they are still and silent. Those who hear what they listen, are interested in and imitate them until they form an increasingly numerous circle. In the center of all these swollen neighbors, there is a radio.

When the light went out in Spain, the radio was lit. Not any radio. The usual, the one before, the one that many keep in a drawer or threw in the last cleaning. That our grandmothers put under their pillow, which crowned our kitchens and in which many of our parents preferred to listen to the goals. The Transistor to Pilas has become on Monday in the center of many corrillos, arising spontaneously in different parts of Madrid, Barcelona and other cities affected by the massive cut of electricity. Dozens of neighbors, eager to find information about what happened, swirled around those who went out with a radio.

They asked them to upload the volume, and there they stayed. Little more could be done.

The voice of Carlos Alsina extends in the Madrid square of Jacinto Benavente. He says that some cities in northern and southern Spain have recovered the light and moves the latest information about those that remain dark. A young man with a stamped shirt has been listening attentive for hours. Try to find out well to answer the questions of who is coming to ask. He was the one who two hours before decided to place a radio, connected to a speaker, on the floor of the square.

His name is Francis and he is Chilean. “In Chile we have the habit of, before emergency cases, get a radio to the street. Maybe another neighbor does not have or do not know what happens, and so we find out,” says the young man, who has been in Spain for two months, and the blackout has touched him in the last part of his trip. “People constantly arrive. Some ask if something is known. I make the summary of what I hear, and it is a way to prevent them from getting nervous, that there are chaos.”

The traveler has tried to calm the restlessness of several citizens, who asked fearful of certain alarmist messages. “Here you can listen to the official information. Thus you can calm the people who are afraid for not knowing,” says the Chilean.

Among the people who have been planted in front of the transistor, there is José. The blackout caught him in the doctor and, at the exit, he walked for hours without understanding what was happening. Until he crashed with Francis’s radio. “I had no batteries at home and I couldn’t know anything about what was happening. There was a lot of confusion. I’ve stayed here to find out.”

When the light left, María José also looked for answers away from home. A trade worker informed her about what was known so far and pointed out a small radio: “He gave me the idea of ​​going to buy one,” says the lady at another point in the center of Madrid. He went to a bazaar, bought a small transistor and batteries. In the Latin neighborhood, discreetly, the woman approached the device to her ear.

“People began to approach. I wondered if I knew something, and I climbed the volume. There have been more than one hundred people there listening, a barbarity,” explains the lady, after six hours with the small transistor in my hand. The workers of a nearby bookstore approach and offer paella to eat. “We have met today. At least this serves to meet our neighbors,” says another of the young people who swirl around the woman.

Long waiting to buy radio to batteries

Some stumble upon transistors in the squares and others travel the streets in search of a trade to find them. Luis’s small shop showcase, located in La Latina, is full of batteries. They rarely attract the attention of the pedestrians, but this Monday the tail has come around the block, as has happened in businesses from several parts of Spain. In Córdoba, portable transistors began to run out and the neighbors waited long rows in the city’s bazaars to get them.

“I’ve never sold so much in business decades,” says Luis, who replies with the eldiario.es, while he does not stop attending to his clients. Maria asks for all: “Radio, Lantern and batteries.” The woman, neighbor of the neighborhood, is glad that, at least he and her modest business, benefit from the blackout. “I am from the neighborhood of a lifetime and he has always been. I could buy a alarm clock, but of course, I already lasted a lifetime and I couldn’t buy much more,” he says in front of the seller. The man, of Moroccan origin, smiles shyly: “In this situation, the simplest does not fail. But I hope this does not last long, it has to be fixed,” adds the merchant.

Beside him, two other dependents serve the dozens of people who ask for their “survival kit.” They are not employees of this store, but work in nearby businesses. “We have had to close, we saw all these people in front and we have come to help Luis,” replies the man, after hours attending to customers who are not his. “Without them it would have been very difficult,” says the business owner, an older man who has dedicated his life to the sale of transistors and other small devices, mostly in batteries.

Outside small trade, Ekaitz has just added to row. “I didn’t know what to do at home, and I thought a radio could entertain me. In my neighborhood everything was closed. It took two bus hours to come to the center to buy it,” says twenty. At home, with nothing to do, he began to overwhelm and has traveled half Madrid in search of a radio to batteries: “I want to know what happens, and also listen to music if I get bored.”

In several of the terraces of Madrid, the transistor accompanied some of those who went down to the bar waiting for the light. It is usual to see people sitting in the sun with their mobile in hand; It is not so much that a radio crowns the table. But this has been the scene repeated this Monday in several coffee shops in the capital. Informative newsletters have also sounded from the balconies of some homes, from where they raised the volume to inform their neighbors, which were concentrated on the street.

From the windows down from some vehicles, their drivers shared with other citizens the information they listened inside. In a mouth of Alcalá Street in Madrid, a parked car attracted the attention of a good number of people who, around three thirty in the afternoon, listened to, in a city that was becoming silent for minutes, the voices that emitted the speakers of the car, at its maximum power. In a radio station, the announcer connected with radio frequency fans, which during the blackout have also contributed to transmit information.

Not only sounded information from portable transistors. Also music. The balconies of different homes in the center of Madrid became portable discos for a while. In certain points of the Madrid neighborhoods of Malasaña or Lavapiés, dozens of people gathered under those windows where music roared at full volume. The blackout is also dancing.

“Silence!” María José ordered the neighbors with whom he was already beginning to feel confidence after radio and conversations. From his small radio the voice of Pedro Sánchez bursts. People approach again and the circle that began to dissolve grows again in seconds. In his speech, the president asks not to disseminate bulos and trust only the official information. That of which dozens of people, in different corrillos of Spain, tried to find through the radio to Pilas, the usual, which many rescued and lit when the light went out.