In the middle of nowhere, where the air turns, stands a gigantic building of 220 housing units, in the Rejas district. A forgotten corner of the San Blas-Canillejas district which extends into the municipality of Coslada, parallel to the Barcelona highway. It is the street of Lola Flores and that of Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, two illustrious figures of 20th century Spanish culture to whom the local inhabitants do not do justice. Of course, the Catalan writer could very well have set one of his detective novels there, since the patrol cars give no respite after the series of events that occurred in the complex, occupied by at least fifty squatters for two or three. years. Since February, it has been the scene of a kidnapping, a murder, another attempt by Latino gangs and a quiet death from a gas leak.
This Monday, at 8:30 p.m., Edgar, a Colombian, returned from work to one of the apartments in block number 2 of the ghost complex. His companion, a 35-year-old Venezuelan, was lying unconscious in one of the rooms of the apartment they occupied. Police sources tell this newspaper that the death occurred due to inhalation of carbon monoxide, caused by a generator that the couple used to have electricity. The unfortunate woman made the mistake of closing the room and the accumulated gases caused her a so-called gentle death.
ABC spent a morning with a large group of these squatters, those from Block 1, who are not confrontational and who only claim to need a job. Some have been there for two months; others, like a Colombian septuagenarian, will turn one this month. There are those who spend double their time at 5 Lola Flores Street. They live without electricity, without drinking water, without papers and almost without hope. Most are from Peru, but there are those who were born in the country of coffee, in Venezuela, in Africa, lifelong Spaniards… A few meters from the dilapidated entrance to the block, with the dented steps, the tagged walls and an improvised barbecue. on one of the ground floors there are three GOR patrols of the district national police.
The agents and squatters, in addition to a trail of blood on the ground floor of the building and at the exit, with footprints of the victim everywhere, witnessed that barely 48 hours before, Sunday afternoon , Block 1 was the scene of a savage murder. Blonder Walter, a 41-year-old Dominican who has lived in Spain since the age of 6, explains it clearly: “It’s a group from outside who came looking for problems, some of them live in the 3” block. “Actually the problem started on Saturday evening,” said Leidy, a young Colombian. “They were celebrating a birthday in some apartments on the other side that they took and those who only go there on weekends, to party.” It concerns what he calls “in green”, a group of supposed ultras of a Colombian team who discovered that half a dozen supporters of the rival team, from the same country, had joined the bloc of our interlocutors. These are the ones that the young girl calls “the ones in red”.
The violent from the other area of the complex returned again at six in the afternoon to look for their rivals, so to speak, gathered to watch the match on their cell phones. Inside, a fight broke out and they saw “one of the guys in green come out, pouring blood from his neck, from his throat, like it was a fountain,” Blonder Walter remembers. biting it. Nicknamed Calero, he was 35 years old and Colombian. He is from Deportivo Cali. He collapsed while trying to escape down the exterior steps of the building, while the attackers fled. At the close of this edition, Homicide Group V had already identified the murderer. He is a fan of the Barón Rojo faction of América de Cali.
The murderer of Sandra Palo
On November 5, a young Salvadoran man was beaten by a group of youths from the Latin Trinitarios gang. This is a settling of scores on the part of the boss of the squats in block 3, the most problematic, since the victim refused to pay him to move to another apartment. He allegedly called the gang members to teach him a lesson. Municipal police and national police arrested a 23-year-old Dominican the same afternoon; a 20-year-old Romanian; a 20-year-old Colombian; two Spaniards from Madrid, aged 21 and 19, and a Torrejonero, also from our country, aged 17.
In block 1, they qualify this information: “What happened was that the Salvadoran squatted in the man’s apartment and didn’t want to leave, so he called his son, who is Trinitarios , who came with his friends and attacked him, he explains. one of the neighbors who witnessed the events.
The Lola Flores development, 5, was going to be a luxury development, with hundreds of loft-style apartments, a swimming pool, garage, cafeteria and tennis court. In February, the first news of this promotion broke: Ramón Santiago Jiménez, alias “Ramón”, one of the four rapists and murderers of the young woman from Getafe, Sandra Palo, was arrested there. They accused him of having kidnapped and tortured members of the Gabarre clan.
