Part 2: Cuida Valdeluz
In the early 2000s, property speculation in Spain reached its peak. All over the country, cranes were going up and a building-fever was consuming Spaniards of all social classes. Between 2002 and 2007, 600.000 homes were built yearly, mainly on the outskirts of large cities and in coastal regions.
This uncontrolled real estate fever is now creating a map of empty land and housing. It is estimated that there are 1.4 million unoccupied homes in the whole of Spain. With the bursting of the real estate bubble, the construction sites in progress have been transformed into ghost towns and have become a favored topic for the Spanish press and television. The names El Quiñon, Ensanche de Vallecas and Ciudad Valdeluz have become famous throughout Spain, as emblems of the crisis born from a building madness.
While these developments were announced as uninhabited, when I arrived in 2014 I realized that there were a few inhabitants in the streets, contrasting with the image of a ghost town.
Following the documentation of the implementation of these new urbanizations on the Spanish territory, I chose to follow the birth of Ciudad Valdeluz in a long term project, to confront the urbanistic project with the reality, to question the appropriation of the territory and its expansion by the arrival of new inhabitants.
By returning to the city every year, I am witnessing its evolution. Deserted streets are slowly coming back to life, people are settling down to enjoy a better living environment than the Madrid suburbs, and new shops are opening. The town-hall offers services and activities and the primary schools have welcomed their first pupils in September 2017.
In 2022, the town has 5,140 inhabitants, with the highest population growth in Spain in 20 years at +2,659.2%.
From a ghost town to an emerging city, the challenge is great for the residents who indirectly place the living in this new habitat.
Ciudad Valdeluz, Espagne - 2015/2023
