The Odyssey to go to work or go home: “Like Filomena, but with heat” | Spain
The amazement that causes mass blackout that affects Spain e Portugal It is evident above all in the great transport knots of Madrid. Going or returning from work has become an unexpected hate app Of the VTC inaccessible from the fall of the mobile network and data.
In the underground exchanger of Avenida de América, the only one in which four metro lines, head and end of numerous urban and interurban bus lines converge, people went to the road and ask how to get home or how to get to work. A young woman tells another who will have to go on foot, but does not know how it comes out because it usually goes on the subway. “Look at Google Maps … Ah, you can’t” receive any answer.
The situation is repeated in the roundabout of Manuel Becerra and in sales, other nerve transport centers in the capital, and in general in this long section of Alcalá Street, the most extensive in the capital. On the other side of the M-30, already in the Linear City district, a neighbor decided to open the doors of his car parked on the road of Máximo San Juan and put the radio in full volume so that pedestrians can listen to the news.
Around them, people walk alternating cell phones that in this area, the linear city district, do not receive a sign. “I do not arrive, I do not arrive,” complains about a young man who walks quickly like the crowd that attacks the sidewalks, particularly close in this stretch of the road.
The traffic lights have exhausted the light from the Plaza de Manuel Becerra until in the linear city district, with the only exception of the García Noblejas Avenue brothers and the cars circulate slowly to pass the numerous pedestrians. “This is like a Filomena, but with heat,” says a young man, in reference to the snow storm that in 2021 paralyzed the capital for days. It is sitting on a terrace of a bar that, like all the rest of the shops, has become dark. The 21º brand thermometer.
It is not possible to find a free taxi, he regrets a woman who accompanies a man of age on the edge of the sidewalk. All buses circulate full of people and street sidewalks are crowded with people. Another woman, elderly, asks the door of a Carrefour supermarket, in which there is a tail of about 25 people waiting to enter, if you can pay for paper and a manager tells you no. Different people with packets of bottled water.
The long files are also the norm in the bus stops, full of citizens. “It is worth any bus in this direction,” says a traveler who shouts to the driver. The employee of a canteen who has just entered his work asks a partner in tone if there is a subway for when he has to leave, at night. But anguish does not affect all those who have seen their suspended task for a greater cause. An electrician comments Jocieto to some group companions: “The Spaniards are not used to a real blackout. If they lived in Peru …”.
