There are runners and runners. And then there is this man. At 9:00 in the morning a man in his 40s happily ran through Madrid Río. It wasn’t going fast, but it wasn’t slow either. A happy, precise jog with a good rhythm. The guy looked at the clock from time to time. Looking for your brand? Maybe. The situation, however, became tense from the Puente de Toledo. The citizens began to crowd into one of its walls as if what they were looking at under their feet was a shooting star. It was an unusual event. A closed park and a man inside doing sports: everyone’s dream. Most took photos, of course. The runner kept up with him, oblivious to the fame he was reaping. A couple shouted at him: “But what are you doing? If you can’t, man! ” The situation resulted in a gathering between several citizens. “I do not understand anything. What a hard face”. “Nerd. We should all be there. ” Look at that, look at that. The runner was a martyr, a paladin in the middle of confinement. The story ended in five minutes. A patrol car appeared at full speed through the park and braked hard at the runner’s height:
– Gentleman, you can’t run through the park. Go away. I will not repeat it.
The runner, of course, ran away from there with a stride higher than before. Afterwards, the police activated the loudspeaker and addressed the dozens of athletes who were watching the scene from the top of the bridge: “Now it seems that everyone is doing sports.”
Madrid got up this Saturday to walk, jog and run with enthusiasm. Between 6:00 and 10:00, most of the sidewalks showed a higher flow than in the last days. The center, for example, looked like a cycling tour. Despite the fact that the order published in the BOE allows the exits to the green areas and parks (excluding the swing and games areas, which must remain closed), the reopening of these depends on the City Councils. In the Community of Madrid several have decided to do it, such as Pozuelo and Fuenlabrada. This is not the case in the capital, where the mayor, José Luis Martínez Almeida, considers that keeping them closed “facilitates the control” of the Municipal Police so that the conditions established by the Government for the departure of adults by time slots are met. . Nor has the closure of streets to traffic been enabled in order to decongest sidewalks as Ada Colau did in Barcelona.
“The city should always be like this,” says Luis, 49, who has approached his mountain bike from Sanchinarro to the downtown area. Playing sports has been divided into three types. Those who wear gloves and masks, those who wear masks, and those who wear nothing. Carmen Rocío, a 24-year-old Almería civil guard, has been training at home all these weeks. “All day with YouTube”. As he passed through Cuatro Caminos he wore a wide and sweaty smile of satisfaction.
“I have lived in this neighborhood all my life and have never seen so many people go for a run in the morning,” says Rubén Osorio, a resident of the Las Ventas Bullring. It is hot and the scooters that cross between people have returned. “It’s finally my turn to go out,” explains Belén Martínez, 26, who has neither a dog nor children.
The Toledo Bridge, with its nine eyes and its 180 meters long, was a constant coming and going of runners, cyclists, walkers. If the width is already narrow, a patrol car circulated from end to end, monitoring excesses and further reducing the space to exercise. The debate of the majority of the citizens was in the reopening of the parks. Jose Luis and Paloma, 48 and 52 years old, left the house at 9.30. They say that at 7:00 am many citizens bypassed the ban and entered the park. “They have to open it. It is necessary to avoid crowds ”. The police patrol, however, turned the loudspeaker back on before the influx of people crossing the bridge:
– But let’s see, what are you doing standing there, sir. Common sense. This is full of people.
“Open the park, hell,” answered one.
– Common sense, please, common sense. Now it seems that everyone does sports- continued the agent.
– But if they don’t let us do anything else!
With information from Luis de Vega and Lucía Franco.
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