Dismantled slides and swings blend in with tractors in what is now the corpse of the Duque del Infantado playground, or La Boni, as the neighbors call it. The space of almost 3,000 square meters, located in the old town of Manzanares el Real, saw several generations of Manzanares residents grow up for 50 years, but since Monday it has returned to private hands. The Duchess Almudena Arteaga, heiress of the aristocrat who renounced his land in 1975 and a successful writer, has triumphed in her dispute to free up a piece of land that is a symbol of the municipality, a few meters from the Mendoza castle.
“The interest of a family, which does not need it because it has a lot of property, is the same as that of hundreds of working families who need a green space where their children can play after school,” explains neighbor Vera Aguado, as he passes the area where the children have hung signs saying “we want to continue playing.” “It’s a scandal, but the fault also lies with the City Hall, which did not know how to avoid it. Bad prevention,” laments another resident. But for Mayor José Luis Labrador (PSOE), the dismantling was inevitable: “We had to comply with a court decision,” he tells the media.
Labrador is one of at least three mayors who negotiated with Arteaga for the property, initially designed for agricultural activity. After the end of the transfer contract, the Duchess offered the land to the municipality for an approximate value of 2,000,000 euros. “As a public administration, I requested technical reports and the report indicated a price of approximately 140,000 euros. There was no longer any point of agreement because she understands that the land has an urban classification and the municipal technicians say no, that the subsidiary regulation establishes that this land is part of an agricultural domain and that the market value is lower.
Unable to reach a common point, both parties initiated two legal proceedings: the Duchess initiated an eviction procedure and the City Hall initiated an urgent expropriation procedure. The expropriation court set a fair provisional price of 1,200,000 euros, but the owner did not accept and appealed. “The court itself urged us to restart the procedure as ordinary and not as urgent (forced deprivation for public utility or social interest). This hindered the process for us because it is a procedure that can take two or three years. In the meantime, the eviction process ended and they told us that we had to leave the premises,” says Labrador. proposal in extremis The municipality was supposed to launch a rental offer, but Arteaga asked for 7,000 euros per month; “not viable” for the public administration.
The only real alternative is to move the park, “50 meters from where it was and to an even larger space,” the municipality specifies. From Más Madrid, with which the PSOE formed a government with Podemos after the 2023 elections, and then broke off relations with its partners last July, they are asking that this process be carried out with transparency, a value that, according to them, did not characterize the negotiations with Arteaga. “At Más Madrid, we are not going to judge good or bad decisions, it depends on the circumstances, but one thing does not eliminate the other. Complex things can be transmitted to people. We will ask the mayor to show us the project he has for the transfer. The land on which he plans to move the park was intended for other purposes, for a public parking lot. In addition, it is necessary to cross a road. “We deserve a little more transparency,” Más Madrid councilor in Manzanares el Real, Silvia Masía, told elDiario.es.
Labrador, mayor since 2019, who is facing his second term, assures that he has kept the population informed of the situation. “For more than four years, we have been periodically reporting on this circumstance, both in plenary session and on social networks. To the political parties that make up the government and to the population. “No one can say that they have not been informed.” Some neighbors are also not happy about what the new location of the children’s playground would be: “Moving the historic park from the pedestrian area of the urban center to a wasteland at the back of a parking lot, beyond Madrid Avenue, is not even half a temporary solution. And on top of that, it will cost another fortune,” Juan José Iturriaga protests online.
And for the inhabitants of Manzanares el Real, this space of grass and sand, surrounded by rough stone walls, is a small lung in the center of the city. An emblem that reinforces its air of medieval charm, where in the late afternoon children meet their parents and the elderly. It is also a small ecosystem where century-old trees and plants of different international origins grow, in which storks, swallows and tits nest.
The Countess and the public administration are also having another dispute, that of the medieval castle of Los Mendoza. The colossus, representative of late Gothic and Castilian military architecture, is managed by the Community of Madrid through a lease for its public use and management, which expires on January 5, 2025, and Arteaga has already announced that he does not plan to renew the contract. Labrador gives his opinion on the matter: “What worries us most is the impact that private management can have on tourism and therefore on local commerce. They told me that their intention was to run an administration similar to the one they run and that nothing would happen that could harm the Community. I hope that it will stay that way.
