In Spain, an arch-secret duchess and children deprived of a park

LETTER FROM MADRID

Between the closed gates of the Duc de l’Infantado park, the children watch, with annoyed faces, as their castle-slide is overturned on the ground and their rides are dismantled by the technicians of the town hall of Manzanares el Real. In these first days of September, some cry, bang on the gate, climb the bars. In vain.

Almudena of Arteaga and of the Alcazar, XX^e Duchess of Infantado, 57, has reclaimed the gardens that her grandfather had given usufruct over to the municipality in 1975, the year dictator Francisco Franco died, in an effort to win the sympathy of the locals. For fifty years, the children of this municipality of some nine thousand inhabitants, located in the mountains, 50 kilometers north of Madrid, played and grew up there. “It is a park of incredible social and environmental value for the families of Manzanares, the only one in the city centre to offer shade, under large century-old trees, and to create social ties and diversity”, regrets Maria Monclin, mother of a 5-year-old boy.

It has been ten years since the House of Infantado, one of the greatest families of the Spanish nobility, whose origins date back to the 15th century,^e century, demanded that the park be returned to her. The municipality tried to buy it back, but it was unable to agree on a price with Almudena de Arteaga, who is also a successful writer of historical novels. The land registry services estimated the value of the land, which was not buildable, at 140,000 euros. The duchess demanded 2.5 million euros. The city hall launched an expropriation procedure, the duchess responded by initiating an eviction procedure. In June, she won.

“Goods inherited from a feudal system”

“If I had agreed to pay what the owner asked me, I would have been guilty of corruption,” explained on social networks the socialist mayor of Manzanares, José Luis Labrador, in the hope of calming the anger that is rumbling in his town. He then announced the upcoming development of a new park, on a vacant lot used until now as a parking lot. The parents, for their part, have decided not to give up the fight.

On Onda Cero radio, the Duchess of Infantado assured that she had “suffered from having to get there [à l’expulsion] “, and blamed it on “greed” from the town hall, while it “spent a lot of money on park-related taxes”On September 15, the day the garden officially returned to the Casa del Infantado, dozens of families gathered in the park to demonstrate one last time. “How long will a single family be able to pass on property inherited from a feudal system, to the detriment of the general interest?” laments Vera Sanz, a 45-year-old audiovisual technician, who is now deprived of a play area for her three young children.

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