‘Sleepless City’: The light of cinema illuminates Madrid’s Cañada Real shantytown

Paqui sits in a chair facing a house, close to the road, phone in hand. Paqui’s official name is Francisca Jiménez Fernández, she’s 49 years old, and although her body exudes a certain listlessness and a sad smile plays across her face, her eyes sparkle: she has a knack for irony. “I agreed to be in the film to get away from here, because I have a dream of making something of myself,” she says. She looked “very good” on screen, although she became fed up with so many takes during filming. “The film will show that those of us from La Cañada aren’t monsters, or bad people. We want to get out of here, and if we can get help, all the better. That way, people will also see what it’s like to live in a shantytown and among drug addicts.”

Paqui won’t move from that chair or the surrounding area for two days. Her director tells her she was a difficult actress to “get.” “Of course, I can’t stop working. If they call me, I have to go. I can’t say no to a Gypsy.” And she recounts a recent experience with guns and threats. “I have a powerful weapon: the truth. Faced with that...”

The director is Guillermo Galoe (Madrid, 40 years old); the film, Sleepless City, was released in theaters on November 21 after its screening during Critics’ Week at Cannes, where it won the award for best screenplay. It has since enjoyed a glorious festival run. Paqui lives in Cañada Real Galiana, the largest informal settlement in Europe, a nearly 10-mile-long old cattle trail just minutes from downtown Madrid, with nearly 8,000 residents — 4,000 of them, including 1,800 children, in Sector 6 — who have been without electricity since October 2, 2020, when the power company cut off service to Sectors 5 and 6, the two southernmost sectors. They are facing the coming winter — yet another one — relying on diesel generators and solar panels. The art collective Boa Mistura brought color to some corners of La Cañada in 2021, and near the end of Sector 6, where Sleepless City was filmed, they erected a large solar-powered garland with the slogan “Light for Cañada.” The word “light” melted away long ago. An accident that became an existential summary.

During the two days spent preparing this feature story, Galoe answered the question, “When are you starting the second part?” over a hundred times. He always replied with a smile: “You have to do it yourselves.” This question was usually followed by two others: “Will there be a role for me?” and “When can we see Sleepless City?” On October 11, Galoe held a preview screening for La Cañada at the old furniture factory: it was packed, but many residents said they couldn’t see it “because of work” or other commitments. Going up and down through Sector 6, Galoe received constant, warm greetings. The photographer, Maria Jou Sol, a regular visitor to the area, also received them; she had been sleeping there for several days to take the portraits that accompany this text. Curiously, without knowing each other, Jou and Galoe stopped their cameras in front of the same kid, Antonio Fernández Gabarre, “Toni,” a natural in front of the camera, protagonist of Sleepless City and of the short film that started the journey, Aunque es de noche (or, Even Though It’s Night, 2023). Toni is also a fan of Antonio Banderas.

Cañada Real is, in the filmmaker’s apt description, a scene straight out of a Western. A main strip with cars going up and down, and narrow side streets. In the section closest to the A-3 highway toward Valencia, where the Roma population is most concentrated, only women and children are seen in the mornings. The men, teenagers and adults, are either working or sleeping. At the end of Sector 6, which has a large North African immigrant population, there is a greater silence until the afternoon when the residents return from work and the school buses begin their lively routine. “But be careful not to generalize,” says Houda Akrikez, founder and president of the Tabadol Association of Cañada Real. “This isn’t a temporary settlement or a transient camp. It’s not a shantytown, even though there are a lot of substandard dwellings. We call it a neighborhood under construction. The Ombudsman defined it as a neighborhood outside of urban planning regulations. Of course, there are drugs and serious problems. There’s no political will to fix it because they want to evict us to build luxury apartments. As a mother, I can’t give up. I want my children to continue living in this neighborhood and to be able to grow up the way I did. I arrived here when I was eight years old [three decades ago]; La Cañada is my identity, my roots.”

The most authoritative voice in the settlement recalls that when she met Galoe, she thought, “He’s completely crazy.” “He didn’t just come to film a movie; he also wanted to run film workshops.” Of that school, Akrikez remembers, “It was a beautiful thing that gave the kids a chance to express themselves naturally. I think they needed it.” When she saw the short film, her first impression was, “another stigma falling on us.” She explains: “It showed painful things about my neighborhood. Now I understand that positive things can come from that negative impression. Cañada Real is very large, and you can’t hide those problems. I can’t go to my talks and tell people ‘drugs don’t exist. Nor does poverty. Nor garbage.’ Because they’re there. Although, I insist, drugs are sold in an area of less than a kilometer out of the almost 16 kilometers of the neighborhood.” And what does she think of the film? “Well, I like that it’s a family drama that takes place in La Cañada, which could happen somewhere else, but it happens here and it was filmed here. And I’m thrilled that my neighbors are acting in it, not Caucasian types with blue eyes, but those of us who are considered second-class citizens.”

If there’s one thing all those interviewed agree on, it’s that the lack of services is a way of displacing people so that large construction projects in southeast Madrid can continue to grow. In Sector 6, garbage and rubble accumulate on the plots where substandard housing has been demolished (in the North African area, the buildings are usually brick, even two stories high; in the lower part — La Cañada sits on a long ramp in this section — the Roma area, the housing is even more precarious). In Sleepless City, the demolition of a house is shown, the very one where part of Aunque es de noche was filmed. “There’s an expiration date; people are gradually being rehoused in other apartments, uprooting and separating families. Many politicians only care about business,” Akrikez concludes.

Halfway up the hill, around a bend, stands the parish church of Santo Domingo de la Calzada, its bell missing because it was stolen four years ago. Methadone is distributed there to the addicts who live nearby in igloo-shaped tents from a well-known French brand. A man approaches Galoe, recognizes him, and tells him he no longer injects himself; now he’s trying to get clean. He shows his unmarked arms and asks for a role in the sequel. Below, the drug dealing continues. When the police pass by, the action stops. The activity is obvious; the addicts don’t hide, nor do the cars coming and going. The street-level dealing and consumption are openly observed. At the start of Sector 6, Uncle Baretta, the patriarch of his clan, greets the filmmaker, who acknowledges that he was able to film in that area thanks to him. Uncle Baretta, with his wary, fox-like gaze, allows us into his house: the numerous large photographs on the walls bear witness to his life story. He speaks little. The patriarch becomes emotional when he sees a photo of one of his brothers. He won’t say any more. That night, he and his family will warm themselves by one of the bonfires that illuminate that part of La Cañada.

In that darkness, it’s time to approach the home of Jesús Fernández Silva, “Chule,” who is 54. The grandfather on screen, gaunt and pained as he watches his world crumble, is in person a man of formidable presence and quick laughter. “Phew, they saw me, gave me a screen test, and I thought it would be a joke, and look, in the end they hired me.” Proudly, he shows Galoe the bar he’s built and is preparing to open on his property. “Because if I wait for Guillermo to make the series and hire me... [laughs].” Chule lived in many shantytowns before arriving in La Cañada 15 years ago. “This is coming to an end. It has five, 10 years left. They’ll kick us out, there will be only a handful of us left. We’ve had a really hard time here, like during [the snowstorm] Filomena, but in return there’s a community. The politicians? Liars. They’re only after votes.”

During the walks, Galoe (a contraction he made this year of his two surnames, García López, which he used before) began to open up: “It’s been six years of my life. I’ve discovered a very different territory, though close to home, which I came to with the idea of making a film with its community. And over time, friendships were formed, with their joys and their sorrows. Many times I’ve come home feeling broken,” he recounts. He then clarifies: he doesn’t want to make a drama out of his own drama. “But it did create a sense of responsibility for me. The truth is, I’ve aged quite a bit here. Because of the place and because of the project. It’s been very difficult to make this film the way I wanted.”

Toni has already turned 17. In May, he couldn’t go to Cannes with the film because it coincided with his wedding. He reprises his role from the short film in the feature, and for him, Galoe increased the age of his protagonists, two young men, one Roma (Toni), the other Moroccan (Bilal, played by Bilal Sedraoui), who are living their last days of friendship before one is rehoused in an apartment and the other one emigrates to France. Toni is streetwise, incredibly clever, magnetic yet indolent, capable of going from nought to 60 in a fraction of a second. “I hope a lot of people see the film so they understand that we’re not bad,” he says. “There’s fear of Roma people, and we don’t bite.” He wants to make more films, although he hasn’t looked into how, and if he makes it to the Goya Awards, he’d love to meet Antonio Banderas. And he confesses another wish: “I never want to leave La Cañada.”

Guillermo Galoe needed six years for this project. For the first two, he didn’t even pick up a camera. He wasn’t an unknown filmmaker: he won his first Goya Award, the Spanish equivalent of the Oscars, for Frágil equilibrio (or, Delicate Balance, 2016), a feature-length documentary about global inequality resulting from consumer society, narrated by former Uruguayan president Pepe Mujica, who passed away last May. Galoe is driven by both social and esthetic concerns (he began studying architecture), which can be seen in other short films such as Lo-Tech Reality (Detroit meets Afrofuturism in collaboration with the Underground Resistance collective) and As gaivotas cortam o céu (or, Seagulls Cut Through the Sky, 2023), co-directed with the Portuguese filmmaker Mariana Bártolo. With the short film Even Though It’s Night, of which Sleepless City is a visual, thematic, and temporal expansion, he won his second Goya Award. “Do you know what this place compels you to do? To reflect on your role as a filmmaker. I came to La Cañada in the summer of 2014. It was much bigger then, a huge, fortified Tower of Babel. It made a huge impression on me, and I decided I was going to make a film here. How? That’s what the trip has been about: to constantly reflect on the power of images and the responsibility of what to do with them. We must be aware of the power dynamic that is established between the one who films and the one who is filmed; especially in a vulnerable environment, fed up with the image projected by the media.”

Galoe began by forging connections, coming every week for years. “I snuck into one of the neighborhood associations [laughs]. I ran workshops with children, teenagers, sometimes with their parents. I tried to make filmmaking a part of their daily lives. And I gained valuable observation time. We shot short films with a cell phone, and it was also a way for me to learn how the kids represented themselves and their space [a portrait that persists in Sleepless City]. Nobody had asked me to, maybe it wasn’t that relevant to them, but it was what I could offer.” He recalls the Covid lockdown, Storm Filomena, the power outage, the evictions… “That’s why the journey was made with them. I was always concerned that the residents felt their dignity was preserved, that they didn’t feel used.” And finally, he managed to fit a professional shoot into a world that navigates through volatility and unpredictability.

Next up is Harris Dochita. A 31-year-old Romanian, he has a supporting role in the film: “Unfortunately, I’ve been in La Cañada for 13 years. I hope the film helps me get out; this is my only chance.” Galoe had already hinted at his sharp intellect, underscored by his piercing gaze. In 45 seconds, speaking rapid-fire Spanish, Dochita recounts his life: “I used to come to Spain for summer vacations to see my seven brothers, who worked here in construction. The third summer, I earned €150 in a single Saturday, from nine in the morning until two in the afternoon. I can’t say what I did for it. Why go back to Romania when I earned in five hours what’s their monthly salary there? I started working in construction, one day I found a safe full of gold, and that’s how I got hooked on drugs.” He was thrilled to appear in Sleepless City, even though he met Galoe before the short film, and he delivers a spectacular film analysis. On his wrist he wears a watch whose hands and face have fallen off. He hadn’t noticed. For Harris, for part of La Cañada, time flows differently, straight into oblivion.

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