The Gran Vía presents a cliff of neon lights, a luminosity that hides its most sadly dirty rear. A very specific area of Malasaña. On Gran Vía, it smells of saturated fat, there are happy voices and compulsive shoppers in endless lines. Behind, a small lawless town: only three streets. Ballesta, Nao and Puebla, which form the trinity of chaos and which resemble the Raval of Barcelona in the worst moments. It was always a “continuation of Montera” in the sex trade, but, and the oldest agree on this point, prostitutes were part of the landscape and the usual city dwellers. They even called customers by name, with no “commercial” intent. Quite simply because of the customs of the neighborhood. It is also true that La Ballesta has always been this place of bad pensions where a soldier, an adversary of notaries or a cattle dealer spent the night, each with his dreams and his desires. And yes, the scent of Gran Vía becomes diluted when you turn the wind and the avenue itself, and everything already smells of cost, urea, miasma. And we’re only talking about the olfactory. Guillermo García-Hoz, prestigious interior designer and ceramist, has his studio in this pedestrian street that is Nao. Calling a street a street is an exaggeration, but that’s the way things are. The artist, and this is the main thing, is already fed up with being fed up that one of the corners that should “be among the most beautiful in Madrid”, an enclave that has “great neighbors”, has become a Third World Stage. Related News Standard No They find a drug storage room with cocaine, ecstasy, hashish, methadone and Viagra CH There were mornings when, opening his business, he had to “put aside” syringes. He arrived in 2023 preceded by his talent, Malasaña wanted it, but he quickly saw the problems of such short and central latitudes. He knows that craftsmanship is a weapon loaded with a future, and two weeks ago he chose for his art to be vindictive too. To this end, he proposed equipping the space with tiles carrying “beautiful but assertive” messages. Thus, his workshop has become a factory where imagination and creativity are his weapons to fight against decadence. And there are ten people who give their magic and their brush to the cause.madrid_dia_0703In his workshop, he is intoxicated with the artisanal scent of the clay with which his neighbors, with inspiration and confidence, create a mosaic of tiles. The slogans, he says, are ingenious, from “The camels are going home” to phrases with ulterior motives so that drugs, prostitution, delinquency and their derivatives do not proliferate further. These are tiles painted with oxides of different colors and simple designs on the glazed earth that will be placed with double-sided adhesive tape in the most visible corners. It’s an “artistic action, beautification and message”, and, to begin with, they give color to a gray corner. García-Hoz cites, in a brief walk, that “everything got worse after the pandemic”, with the arrival of commerce, “the fights, the organized gangs, the drug dealers”. And if there have been prostitutes since Antiquity, this union is also impacted by the location. They sit on fruit crates, they yawn with all the accents when on the sidewalk opposite, in the Madrid twilight, there are nervous or stalking eyes. The ceramist, whether he knows it or not, is “the Cid” of a conversation of 89 desperate neighbors. Neighbors who act like “the old watchmen” when they see that crimes are being committed in this or that corner. A man of his time, from his land in Madrid, he reveals that “the project has no name” by hanging, as a trial, the first tile above a porch. Before stopping at the contrast that the beautiful church of San Antonio de los Alemanes serves as a border between decrepitude and a part of the city with desires and businesses reminiscent of Paris. A selection of tiles that will be hung in Malasaña TANIA SIEIRAIn its same. street, another artistic workshop opens the door to you. Rodrigo, from Estudio Nao, appears. The situation, he asserts, is already “untenable”. “The police are unable to stop the problem” and it all boils down to “citizens against barbarism”; Rodrigo is of course aware of the possible “vendettas” of these bad people who are walking around and who “have nothing to lose”. Shocked, he remembers “seeing a gun in a dumpster.” Or individuals who “shoot” each other in broad daylight. And the children admiring this panorama with the innocence of age. He still insists that everything went wrong after Covid. He remembers the moment when, “in the open air”, with his colleagues from the workshop, they ate their sandwich in front of the door. Calmly speaking. García-Hoz, if the authority asked him for explanations about his contribution to the visual and significant improvement of the street on the day of laying the tiles, he is clear: “There are much more serious things than looking the goodwill of neighbors. “. In the end, it is up to you to come up with the idea and to you the financial expense for the material for the clay to speak. Theirs, in this, also go “like Fuente Ovejuna: all together”. The day will soon dawn with the “terracotta tiles” in this annex of Malasaña If in Seville ceramics is “weekly”, here it has become a weapon of denunciation It is true that the ceramist had to refrain from proposing. too obvious tiles. The combination of art and complaint. Desperate complaint The situation, as serious as it is, always has its “Berlanguian” side. One day, says García-Hoz with a laugh, he had to “remove it”. with a stick underwear that had been hanging from a lamppost for months”. And this same surrealism led him to an improvised reflection: “The worst is that some tourists find it funny, it’s as if they were in the red light district of Amsterdam.” Perhaps because “the uncojone calls the uncojone”. More graphic impossible. BrothelsABC chats with members of the WhatsApp chat, this apocryphal neighborhood association which shows the beneficial applications that a mobile phone can have. An Internet user summarizes her point of view on the subject in question: “In other neighborhoods, people complain that the apartments have been transformed into tourist apartments; here, in the brothels. They even suggest planting trees in the pits which currently do not shelter any plant species and give more gloom to the environment. They are afraid, and Garcia-Hoz verbalizes it, that a business network on the most extreme margins of legality has already been formed by abandonment, by the force of facts. Ultimately, it comes back to the spirit of his tiles, that beauty can be the most direct tool for achieving community good. From the WhatsApp group, the ceramist retrieves a motivational frontispiece: “Either you impose yourself, or they displace you.” García-Hoz remembers that project to improve the place, the so-called Triball, which was doomed to failure too soon. For the moment, he continues and will continue his chimerical enterprise. Night falls early in Madrid and the street lights are not yet lit. A hubbub of violent voices breaks a certain tranquility. In the chiaroscuro of some autumn terrace, a stranger calmly contemplates a tumultuous struggle between immigrants who have the “black” job of posting posters.
