San Miguel Alto, in Granada (Spain)

San Miguel Alto-Granada (Spain) 

  I went to the San Miguel Alto Juvenile Center in Granada on several occasions between 2013 and 2017 as a teacher to examine residents who were trying to obtain the Secondary Education Certificate. Among these pubescent inmates—failures of an entire society—there were signs of hope: some of them devoted their time in forced confinement to learning. There, as in few other places, one could see the positive effects of a public education system serving the most marginalized. There were only two or three each year. Big lads of sixteen or seventeen to whom I had to devote extra time to explain the meaning of the questions in the Social Sciences exams. Some of those adolescents did not receive a single visit or phone call from their families throughout the entire year, as those responsible for their care confided in me.

It was early June, and a simple plastic pool set up in the yard gathered the rest of the inmates. Mateo was the name of one of the unfortunate candidates. “Teacher, what is an orthogonal urban plan? And what does ‘history of the labor movement’ mean? I’ve never worked.” Some years I examined students at this Center, and in others I did so at the Provincial Prison. There, too, there was a school and prisoners who wanted to study. On one occasion, I ran into a former student. I did not recognize him at first—it was he who approached me. “And what happened to you to end up here?” I asked that young man, in whose gaze the glimmer of my adolescent pupil still flickered.

Entering both institutions was a very similar experience: one had to pass through several successive metal doors that closed behind me before I could access the next. An armed guard, carrying a large bunch of keys, accompanied me throughout the route lined with security cameras, which led to a yard hardened by concrete and enclosed by high security fences. Upon stepping outside and feeling the free breeze, scented by the nearby pine groves and by the jasmine and roses in the courtyards of the cármenes, I felt pity for those almost-children who were beginning their lives on such poor footing.

Today I read in the local press that this juvenile center, located on a privileged lookout from which one can contemplate the Albaicín or the Alhambra, is going to be sold by the Andalusian regional government. It will not be converted into a public school or a health center, nor will it become a space for neighborhood use. A hotel. Yet another one, in a city already bleeding from the wounds of mass tourism and criminal speculation. That will be its new use. The newspaper Ideal headlines, brimming with foolishness and servile stupidity: “The project for a hotel in San Miguel breaks 25 years of paralysis on the hill.” The so-called “paralysis” will give way to the destruction of this high, silent place, I think sorrowfully. And it adds, for the reassurance of many in this blossoming Easter season: “On the Cerro de San Miguel, picturesque caves coexist with hollows in which uncontrolled shacks have been built, posing security risks.”

“Picturesque caves,” this distinguished news outlet—though I hardly dare call it by such a dignified and discredited term—uses to describe these very ancient dwellings. That must be the expression tour guides use to explain to visitors a way of life as ancestral as it is wise, for being sustainable and minimally invasive. And so common in some neighborhoods of Granada: Barranco del Abogado, the Albaicín, Sacromonte. And by “security risks,” is Ideal perhaps referring to those who live in a place with terrible services due to neglect by the authorities, or is the author of the article thinking of the discomfort caused to the carefree tourist by the sight of those shacks when approaching the viewpoint?

For its part, the digital newspaper El Independiente de Granada reports that “The sale of the San Miguel Juvenile Center to turn it into a hotel will intensify touristification, as neighbors warn.” (“And who the hell are the neighbors to have a say in what should or should not be done in a neighborhood?” someone might ask from a comfortable, well-furnished office.) It explains that this area was awaiting a major intervention: the Special Plan for the Cerro de San Miguel, approved by the municipal council just a few years ago. Its aim was “to recover the area as a large public space for the leisure and enjoyment of citizens.” Though only a few years have passed, they seem like different times. Times when, perhaps, the resident was the primary recipient of municipal initiatives—or at least nominally so. But today, it is the tourist, and brazenly so, without pretense.

They call it the “tourism industry,” that invention used to justify any excess. The tourist, a source of income for hospitality businesses and large property owners—the service sector, not “industry,” as I was taught in school—must not be disturbed, not even by asking for a minimal contribution to the public services they use (and which residents pay for), to the cleaning costs of the mess they generate, or to the serious harm their massive presence entails. The impossibility of accessing housing for the vast majority of citizens or the saturation of health services are just some of them.

The regional government justifies the sale of the San Miguel Alto Center as a way to cover part of the enormous costs that the City of Justice will entail. And who needs a City of Justice?, I ask now. It will be located in the two enormous buildings that once belonged to Caja Granada and will extend over a plot that was intended for the construction of a music venue for the city. More than 60 million euros has been paid by the regional government for this other whimsical project, as strongly defended by regional and municipal officials as it is useless for the public. In my modest opinion, rather than a mega unified headquarters for all the courts, what is needed is an efficient and independent justice system, which requires hiring more judges and civil servants, and profound changes in the system of access to the judiciary and in its governing bodies. The disposal of a public asset is justified by immense waste. Ultimately, Granada needs more public schools.

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