Madrid held its annual sheep parade Sunday. The sheep got a guaranteed route through the city center, an official welcome and a ceremony in their honor. The people camped in the main square over rent got asked to leave.
This is the first country I've covered where the livestock have better tenant protections than the tenants.
Here's what's real, per the AP and Madrid's city government. The 33rd Transhumance Festival marched 1,250 sheep and 160 goats from the Casa de Campo park through the old center, a tradition the city has hosted since 1994 to honor the ancient droving routes that run under modern Madrid.
This year the flock skipped the Puerta del Sol, the city's main square, and never reached Cibeles or city hall. Housing activists have been camped in Sol for weeks, so the herd went around them. City officials met the shepherds at the Plaza de la Villa instead.
The camp has a reason. The AP reports the housing protests picked up last month after an 87-year-old woman, María del Carmen Abascal, was evicted from the home she'd lived in for seven decades. She died in the hospital shortly afterward. Seventy years in one place, and the system still found a way to show her the door.
Now the numbers. Idealista says Madrid rents hit a record 23.4 euros per square meter in September, up 4.8 percent in a year. That works out to about 1,638 euros a month for a modest 70-square-meter flat. A study by InfoJobs and Fotocasa found renting an 80-square-meter home in the Madrid region would eat 71 percent of an advertised salary last year. That's not a housing market. That's a subscription you can't cancel.
Meanwhile, the sheep. At the welcome ceremony, officials read the Concordia of 1418, and the herders handed over the traditional "50 maravedís per thousand," the old toll shepherds paid to use the livestock roads. The herd's right to cross public land is written into Spanish law, in a 1995 statute on livestock routes. So yes, the sheep pay rent too. They just get a receipt, a band and a 608-year-old contract.
Mayor José Luis Martínez-Almeida has been asking for the camp to come down, saying, per ABC, there's no longer any excuse to keep it. The sheep had no excuse either. The city redrew the map for them anyway.
Picture a fictional 29-year-old Madrid barista named Javier, watching from the curb with everything he owns in a backpack. He asked a goat how it landed a permanent right of way through the center of town. The goat said, "Baa." Javier says that's also what his landlord says when he asks about the deposit.
On the sewer scale, this rates three rats out of five. One rat for the rent, one for the eviction and one for the parade route. The other two rats were priced out of the sewer and now commute in from Toledo.
By evening the herd was back in its pens outside the city, a guaranteed spot it didn't have to bid on. The protesters stayed in Sol. In Madrid, the only residents with a secure lease are the ones getting sheared.
And here's your bill: the U.S. national median rent was $1,388 a month in September, per Apartment List. That's down $6 from a year ago, which over a full year saves you $72 and gets you zero sheep.
This article is satire. The Demorat is a parody news site; real facts are drawn from the linked sources, and jokes, invented scenes, and fictional characters are not real.
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