"Narc-room" closure leaves addicts to shoot up under the stars again

Senén García, 48, watched part of the recent televised debate between the Socialist and Popular Party candidates for Sunday's general elections. The politicians' voices wafted into Las Barranquillas, a shantytown on the periphery of Madrid where some 20 shacks were put up around the first "narc-room" built in Spain in the year 2000. It is a place where drug addicts can shoot up under social-worker supervision, sleep indoors, eat a hot meal and take a shower.

But Senén, who has been caught up in drugs and living on the streets since the late 1990s, as well as the nearly 40 employees at this public center, will not be in Las Barranquillas for long. Spending cuts are doing away with this service. On January 1, 2012, drug addicts will inject themselves outdoors once again, a scene that takes us back 11 years.

"Addicts have fallen off the agenda; politicians are the least interested of all"

Back then, Las Barranquillas, located in the district of Villa de Vallecas, was Europe's largest drug market. Senén came to Madrid from Oviedo in 2005, and spent five months on the streets, without once taking a shower, until he found out there was a place for addicts like himself, where he could shoot up discreetly with a new syringe, no questions asked. And there he stayed.

"These people have saved a lot of lives," he says, standing inside his own shack, which he built across from the supervised injection room. The workers - who are barred from talking to the press by their employer, the Madrid Antidrug Agency - have witnessed a multitude of overdoses but have prevented thousands more, and are respected by everyone around here.

A van picks its way down the embankment. At the wheel is a Gypsy patriarch who has been bringing his two sons, both drug addicts for years. "It's a dirty trick to shut it down. Would they rather see them shoot up on the street like dogs?" he asks, leaning on a walking cane.

In the distance, two policemen cast an eye over the encampment. It is noon and Santi, an addict who has done jail time, watches them through half-closed eyes. "Let them stay away. I get a rash just by looking at them," he says. Although these days Las Barranquillas looks deserted, 11 years ago this place drew around 13,000 users. It was the kind of image that can be found these days in nearby Valdemingómez: bonfires indicating sale points, addicts looking for a vein, and barefoot children playing in the mud. The problem has not been eradicated; it has merely moved elsewhere.

Despite the lack of mutual trust, in the case of Las Barranquillas at least, drug addicts and police agree that closing down the "narc-room" is a bad thing. The District Security Commission, made up of politicians and police representatives, has asked for the center to be transferred to Valdemingómez. The commissioner of Villa de Vallecas, Porfirio Jiménez, sent a letter to the Antidrug Agency, financed by Madrid's regional government, asking it to reconsider its decision.

"That center is a fixed domicile for drug addicts. They receive court summons at that address, and it is very useful to keep tabs on their whereabouts. That job is going to be a lot more complicated now," he says.

The closure of the supervised injection room on January 1 will have little to do with its opening. It will disappear without a sound, and with barely a memory of the debate it created in 2000. Few people back then appreciated the benefits of having a place for users to score in hygienic conditions. Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón, now the Popular Party mayor of Madrid, was regional premier back then and one of the project's chief supporters. In doing so, he opposed then-Mayor José María Álvarez del Manzano and then-Prime Minister José María Aznar, both party colleagues.

But Ruiz-Gallardón got his way, and implemented the kind of drug harm reduction project that was already underway in the Netherlands and Switzerland and soon imitated in other parts of Spain such as Catalonia and the Basque Country.

Another one of the "fathers" of the "narc-room" was José Cabrera, a forensic scientist specializing in psychiatry. Cabrera, then director of the Antidrug Agency, defended methadone programs for addicts. Now, looking back, he feels that the issue has dropped off the agenda. "Nobody is interested in drug addicts. Ten years ago they were dangerous because they snatched purses and held up pharmacies, but since they now have methadone they've fallen off the map and nobody remembers them," he notes. "And politicians, both from the PSOE and PP, are the least interested people of all. That's the sad truth."

The supervised injection room, which is run by a foundation called Fundación Salud y Comunidad, received a little over two million euros this year. Its director, Almudena Pérez, denies that the reason for the shutdown is an economic one. She says it simply does not make sense to remain in a spot where most of the shacks have been torn down. According to the figures she provides, 80 percent of syringes are now distributed in Valdemingómez, where there are already several mobile assistance units.

So why not move the center there? "The average drug user is no longer the same. He is no longer a homeless heroin addict, but a single man with a midlevel socioeconomic status who is hooked on cocaine. The goal is to get them out of the consumption network and hooked on life again through day centers," she says.

Oblivious to economic and political issues, Santi and Senén do not fit the profile described by the agency. "I'll buy a dog and a bike and I'll travel across the Canary Islands," dreams Senén, who keeps a few loose pages of the Gospel of St John in his pocket. He has read them a thousand times, although he says he is not a believer. "You shall be expelled from the synagogues," announces the apostle from his spot in Senén's wallet, right next to the methadone user card.