A simple mechanical part of the elevator of a neighborhood block in Cartagena has, since last Thursday, practically confined and without the possibility of moving around the 12 elderly people who reside in it. The youngest is 82 years old and the oldest is 96.. Made up of 10 floors, the large number of stairs that stand between their houses and the street constitute a physical barrier that probably prevents them from exercising their right to vote on election day this Sunday, July 23.

The company responsible is a German multinational, which with a part of its staff on vacation has informed them that they will not solve the problem until Tuesday, so many of them will not be able to go to the polling stations.. In addition to the difficulty, and even the risk, that voting in the middle of summer in one of the hottest areas of Spain entails for older people, an added circumstance of these characteristics makes it practically impossible for them to go to vote. “I would like to go, but only young people can leave here,” says Rosa, 82, one of the affected residents from the seventh floor of this block..

“Those of us of a certain age are going to be unable to move until Tuesday,” he says, which means that, apart from the fact that they will not be able to exercise their right to vote, they are not being able to perform basic tasks such as going to the store or to the pharmacy to get their medicines.. In addition, several of them live alone and are needing the help of neighbors or relatives during these days to be able to survive since, as Rosa says, “they do not have money to go to a hotel during these days either.”

Salvador, his son, has spent the last two days trying to find a solution to the problem. Outraged by the lack of alternatives on the part of the company, he had no choice but to file a complaint in court. “It is a shame. We are talking about elderly people who do not go out, some are without air conditioning and cannot go to the pensioner's home either because they cannot go down the stairs ». In addition, as his mother recounts, he is aware that they are going to be left without voting this 23-J. “Even if it were just one person, it wouldn't be fair. If it were a local company, I could understand it, but we are talking about a multinational. What my mother and the rest of the neighbors want is to go out and vote,” he says angrily.

Another of those affected is Antonio, also from the seventh floor, and who did not want to stay on the phone for too long as he was waiting for a number to appear on television that has been enabled in the area so that older people who need it receive help on Sunday: «I will not be able to go vote. I'm 86 years old and I'm walking up the stairs. There is no right to what they are doing to us,” he told this newspaper indignantly and saddened, although he still hopes that someone will come to his home to help him go down the stairs and go vote.

Even more serious is the case of Caridad, who at 96 is the oldest person in the building, lives on the ninth floor and, as her daughter Vicenta, who is asthmatic and who has traveled these days to be with her, explains, is experiencing a very oppressive situation: “We are doing very badly” because, above all, “we are not going to be able to exercise our right to vote, and we were excited to do so. With the political situation so bad that there is, we would like to collaborate as far as possible.

Although the fact that these people will probably not be able to exercise their right to vote tomorrow due to a situation beyond their control is already serious, the fact that they have not obtained a viable alternative from the entity responsible for it further aggravates the situation in which they find themselves and increases their anger.

More than a sea, it would seem that La Rambla (Córdoba) is surrounded by an ocean of olive trees. And instead of the waves, its soundtrack is the cicadas. Its song, which can reach up to 86 hertz, gains intensity as its profile becomes clearer and closer.. Like a song of welcome to La Rambla, to the summer and, above all, to the heat. The Spanish Meteorological Agency certified on August 14, 2021 a temperature of 47.6 degrees, the highest ever recorded in Spain. Here, life has a different rhythm and, above all, a schedule. After noon the streets empty and until late afternoon the town is almost a desert where the only traces of life are the cicadas and Juan, the controller of the blue zone who watches over ghost cars on ghost streets. Welcome to ground zero for heat, welcome to La Rambla, where this 23-J is also voted with the help, yes, of the jugs that your council is going to make available to voters.

In La Rambla, as in the rest of Spain, people also vote and not even the high, extremely high temperatures are enough to deter the majority of its citizens.. Of all those interviewed for this report, 100% say that, no matter what the thermometer shows, today they will go to vote and the official figures for the last elections confirm that the level of participation is usually around 80%.. “Voting is our obligation,” they say at the Hogar del Pensionista gathering.

The City Council, where Jorge Jiménez (PP) rules after winning his second consecutive elections last May, has ensured that the polling stations are located in air-conditioned premises and, just in case, it is going to take out its secret weapon, the jug on La Rambla. Made from a native clay, the clay, which is extracted from the subsoil, has a particular shape, although the key is, says Jiménez, that salt is added to the clay “so that it sweats” and the water “really” cools.. There will be two in each school, explains the mayor, plus 200 bottles of mineral water for the members of the tables.

The objective is that the heat does not mark the electoral day, in which, if the last two calls to the polls are attended (July 19, the Andalusian ones, and March 28, the regional and municipal calls), the PP has everything to win. At 87 years old, Fernando knows what he is talking about. At only nine years old, he got behind a team and did not leave the field until he retired.. With her head protected by a hat, she takes the fresh air – it is a saying – in the shade of a tree in the Parque del Arroyazo, very close to her house, like every day. He leaves first thing in the morning, at 7:00 a.m. to be exact, and enjoys his freedom until, more or less, 11:00 a.m., when the temperatures begin to be more than bearable.. He spends the rest of the day locked up, a prisoner in his house and tied to the air conditioning unit that, while life gives him, takes its toll on his tired legs.

On the opposite bench, Juan, 47, has just returned from enjoying his daily dose of cycling, 70 kilometers, to the neighboring town of Lucena, which he starts riding almost at dawn.. Because he, like his neighbor Fernando, also locks himself in his apartment at noon, although in the afternoon he has to go out to work. He is a bus driver in the capital, Córdoba, which is barely 40 kilometers from here.. To give us an idea of what heat is like on La Rambla, he explains that in his house they have “hot water and, in addition, very hot water” because the pipes are in full sun and not a drop comes out of the tap that can be described as cold or even warm.

A fan in a polling station in Getafe. JAVI MARTINEZ

When EL MUNDO looks into this corner of Córdoba, La Rambla is reasonably well. The maximum temperature will not rise above 38 degrees and that is like saying that it refreshes. Nothing to do with the previous days, in which hell emerged and took over this town of just over 7,500 inhabitants.. Although the rambleños are made to withstand heat and the phrase they repeat the most is that “we are used to it”. What a remedy, one might add.

Marta, Lola and Carmen have breakfast on a terrace on the Paseo de España before fleeing to their respective houses and swimming pools, which are not a luxury here, but a lifesaver.. They meet up every morning to play sports -they practice crossfit- and then give each other a tribute based on coffee and toast with wholemeal bread. They say, between bites and sips, that in La Rambla what it is about is “surviving”.

the recipe is simple. Full air conditioning (there is practically no house without an air conditioning unit), hangouts at the pools and outings, just enough, and when it gets dark. Or before the mercury shoots up. And who can move during these months to the country houses -with swimming pools, of course- that abound along the Montemayor road. A hailstorm also helps, the coffee one is the star, in the ice cream parlor that the Colomina family has run for decades. Enna now attends to the other side of the counter and advises against, as an expert that she is, ordering ice cream these days. “It doesn't get past the door without melting,” he warns with a smile.

Another option is the municipal swimming pool, which in this town in deep Córdoba, in the heart of the Guadalquivir Valley, opens uninterruptedly from nine in the morning to ten at night. In the early hours it offers sports activities, especially aquagym, and the rest of the day, an oasis where bodies battered by the heat can cool down.

Antonio's wife is one of the regulars, says the husband as he pays the bill for the coffee he just had with his friends at the Hogar del Pensionista. The gathering is already declining because here everything starts early. Antonio, Bernardo, Juan and Manolo can be found every morning at the same table (or one beyond) discussing the same face-to-face thing between Pedro Sánchez and Alberto Núñez Feijóo as Alcaraz's triumph at Wimbledon. And from the heat, of course, although the song is the same. “We are used to it,” Antonio says, and the others nod.. By sitting in the shade and collecting yourself at a prudent hour…

Alerts throughout Spain

But although the records do, the heat is not going to be the only patrimony of anyone this Sunday. The AEMET has declared an orange alert for temperatures of up to 40 degrees this Sunday, as well as in the Cordoba countryside, in the Genil Basin, the Guadalquivir Valley in Jaén, the Guadix and Baza regions (Granada) or in the Ribera del Ebro, in Navarra.. There are also yellow alerts for the heat wave in Seville, Jaén capital, La Mancha, the Serranía de Cuenca, and a good part of Aragón, La Rioja and the provinces of Lérida and Madrid. EL MUNDO witnessed this Saturday the preparations at the CEIP Emperador Carlos V electoral college, in Getafe, in which air conditioners, fans and all available devices have been arranged so that the polling stations, usually already closed on these dates, do not become hell during voting day.

The same is happening in the Balearic Islands, which are preparing to face an election day marked by the high temperatures expected for this Sunday.. In an essentially touristic community and with more than 160 kilometers of beach, it is expected that the influx to the polls will be concentrated in the early hours of the day and in the late afternoon. The Balearic government has activated a plan to prevent heat stroke, reinforcing the presence of the SAMU061 emergency services and supplying polling stations with documentation with protocols for action in the event of heat stroke.

A worker unloads bottles of mineral water for the Hogar del Pensionista de La Rambla. GOGO LOBATO

In the case of the Valencian Community, with a forecast that the thermometer will reach 36 degrees in inland areas of Valencia, the main concern of the municipalities and the Government Delegation is how to mitigate the heat in the polling stations. Most of them do not have air conditioning in their classrooms, so the fan will be practically the only way to alleviate the high temperatures.. So the Delegation and the consistories have made hundreds of fans available to the schools. In some municipalities such as Aldaia, Ontinyent or Xàtiva, the decision of the city councils has been directly to move the polling stations to places with air conditioning.

The other measure consists of the distribution of bottles of water for the members of the tables. In the case of the city of Valencia, for example, those who have had to be at one of the polling stations will have up to two liters of water for the whole day. In the Valencian capital alone, the special device that the consistory has designed for the proper functioning of voting involves mobilizing a total of 800 people, including local police officers and library and education guards to open and close schools.

In the same way, the embarrassment that drowns the Barcelonan at the end of July will be mitigated with the distribution of 18,000 half-liter bottles of water that will be distributed among the different polling stations in the Catalan capital. 10% of the polling stations in the city -a total of 163, spread over 32 polling stations- will change location, in most cases because the schools are carrying out improvement works taking advantage of the summer break.

In other Catalan cities such as Sabadell, a dozen polling stations have been closed due to not having adequate ventilation to be able to face voting day with guarantees. And in the Barcelona town of Mollet del Vallès, the City Council will place fans in schools that do not have air conditioning and will deliver fans to the citizens who are members of the polling stations.

Correos has established a special logistical deployment for this Sunday, in which up to 14,000 company employees will work, to guarantee the correct functioning of the postal vote and the collection of the final count on this electoral day. Specifically, the delivery, office and treatment center staff of the public postal company will participate in the day, while also mobilizing all the necessary vehicles from its fleet.

When the polling stations open, a first team of company personnel will deliver the ballots in custody at the 60,314 polling stations distributed in the 22,562 electoral locations of the 8,131 municipalities in Spain.. Finally, another team will collect the so-called third envelope, with the final result of the scrutiny, from the polling stations of each and every polling station in the country.

For these elections, Correos has carried out more than 21,000 reinforcement contracts, both for offices and for the delivery of shipments and the necessary tasks in logistics centers, opening offices in an extraordinary way on Saturday and Sunday, with an extension of customer service hours until 10:00 p.m. in 654 offices throughout the country, opening on local holidays and the extension of hours throughout the network, particularly in tourist areas where there has been a greater influx.

All of this has resulted in 2,622,808 applications for postal voting, which is a historical record, of which 2.47 million have resulted in a vote, the highest figure in the entire democratic period in Spain.. Only 150,873 people who applied to vote by mail have not voted. In addition, it has distributed the electoral propaganda shipments of the different parties and coalitions that attend the elections.

“In short, Correos has adopted since the call for the general elections on July 23, all the necessary organizational measures to guarantee compliance with the obligations entrusted to it during the electoral processes.. The public postal company has put and will continue to put all its technological, logistical and human resources to guarantee citizens the full exercise of their right to vote,” says the public company.

The fire in La Palma has been officially considered under control at midday this Saturday. The Minister of Territorial Policy, Territorial Cohesion and Water, Manuel Miranda, responsible for Emergencies, has announced today the positive evolution of the fire, which allows it to go to Level 1 Emergency, as established in the Special Plan for Civil Protection and Emergency Attention due to Forest Fires in the Autonomous Community of the Canary Islands (INFOCA).

This decision is made at the proposal of the technical director of the INFOCA Plan, after consultations and deliberations of the advisory committee and extinction management. From this moment, the Cabildo de La Palma assumes the direction of the emergency, the intervention of resources and communication to the population.

With the stabilization of the fire on Wednesday, the extinguishing tasks of the last days have focused on the hot spots to consolidate the perimeter and avoid outbreaks, taking special care with the episode of wind registered on the islands, conditioned by the orography.

Faced with this favorable situation, the withdrawal of the media displaced to La Palma began yesterday, including the UME and the Ministry's amphibious planes, as well as firefighters from other islands.

The fire broke out at 01:05 a.m. on Saturday, July 15, in the forest-urban interface area in El Fayal, in Puntagorda, and passed severity level 2 at 07:42 that same morning.

This fire started with a very wide front in an urban area and progressed rapidly, it has affected an area of 2,900 hectares, although this figure may be lower, when a measurement is made at the foot of the land, since there have been unburned areas within the perimeter.

The Court of First Instance and Instruction number 3 of Antequera (Málaga), acting as a guard, has ordered this Saturday the release with precautionary measures of the man arrested in connection with the death in the Malaga town of Humilladero of his ex-wife, Carmen Cortés, from whom he was separated, but with whom he was still in contact and had an intermittent relationship.

The ex-husband of the victim -nicknamed El Zorro and a native of a town in Malaga with 5,400 inhabitants located 15 kilometers from Humilladero, Alameda, where he was located by agents of the Civil Guard- is currently under investigation and will have to appear at the request of the court whenever it requires him, they have explained from the Superior Court of Justice of Andalusia (TSJA).

The crime that will be charged and for which he will be tried, injury or homicide, is yet to be decided and it will be during the investigation of the case when this aspect is determined, as reported by the TSJA. Although the Government Delegation against Gender Violence confirmed this Friday the macho nature of the crime, which would be the eighth in Andalusia and number 29 so far this year in Spain, and from the Humilladero City Council they speak openly of the “tragic death” of one of their neighbors, “victim of gender violence at the hands of her partner”.

At dawn from Thursday to Friday, Carmen Cortés -Carmela for her family and friends- called the 112 Andalusia Emergency Service, told them that she was having difficulty breathing and, as best she could, told them about the altercation with her ex-husband.. Members of the Civil Guard and health services traveled to the address where she was located – her home – and took Carmela to the Antequera Regional Hospital, where she was admitted with head trauma, but her injuries were very serious and she had to be evacuated by helicopter to the Malaga Regional Hospital.. In this hospital center he died hours later, as confirmed by health sources.

Before she died, she had time to point out her ex-husband, whom she married on July 22, 1984 -39 years ago now- in a parish in Alameda -the small municipality in Malaga where the person under investigation took refuge after the alleged assault- and with whom she had three children -one of whom died thirteen years ago-.

Carmela, 54, was a temporary farm worker and a resident of this town of just over 3,000 inhabitants in the Antequera region, in the northern part of the province of Malaga.. He was born there and has lived there until this Friday when he lost his life in a new episode of sexist violence.

This would not be the first time that El Zorro had attacked Carmela, although it would be the last. Less than a week ago, on July 15, another incident occurred between the victim and her alleged attacker.. After this, the woman had told some relatives that she was “afraid” of her ex-husband and had even asked one of her nephews for help.

In addition, both were included in the file of the Comprehensive Monitoring System in cases of Gender Violence, known as the VioGénen System, because Carmela had denounced it in September 2020.. Legal action was never taken and the complaint remained inactive.

The alleged attacker was transferred this Friday to the victim's home for a reconstruction of the events, as well as to Alameda for a house search, and this Saturday he was taken from the Antequera dungeons to the court, which confirmed his release.