Madrid wants to be the Miami of Europe. In the fashionable restaurants of the capital of Spain, Spanish is spoken with all the accents of Latin America. The Venezuelans alone are more than 110,000. The Salamanca neighborhood is starting to be called Little Caracas. The last to land there were the Mexicans: at the moment there are 10,000, but the number is growing daily. Most of them are people with possibilities, who find in Madrid a city where it is easy to understand each other, not only because of the language of the street, but also because of the language of business. They value the safety of the city, but also the opportunities. The big funds rub their hands together.
Pasqual Maragall was the first to warn that Madrid wanted to play in another division – “the world league of cities” – and he has succeeded. “Madrid is leaving”, the then mayor of Barcelona headlined an article in El País in 2001. Aznar put the infrastructure in place to make this possible, such as a large transoceanic airport and a high-speed network that converges in Madrid. In addition, the capital had the big companies and the process managed to move the headquarters of the ones it lacked. “Madrid has gone”, he stated years later in another opinion column.
If there is a business friendly city it is Madrid. It’s almost a tax haven. Not only do you pay less tax, but everything is easier than in other big cities. In the speech of the recent inauguration, Isabel Díaz Ayuso proclaimed that she wanted “a Madrid that is increasingly free, prosperous, humane, cheerful and, as always, at the service of Spain”. He said nothing about a city that is more supportive, balanced and with better public services. Then he gathered his Government and kicked them all out. She reduced the ministries to nine and hired professionals to take care of things, which she was already in charge of politics. With Miguel Ángel Rodríguez in the war room, the question that some are asking is whether this Madrid is sustainable for Spain. The capital turns out to be a vacuum cleaner of resources and opportunities. The idea of ??Madrid’s disloyalty as a result of the capital’s premium takes root. It is good that Madrid is the shortest way to heaven, but that it is not at the cost of sending the periphery to hell.
