The Order arrives on March 19 with the signing of Celso Rodríguez, president of the Superior Court of Justice of Madrid: the Guard Service of the Courts of Diligence of Plaza de Castilla must be temporarily transferred. The reason? The torrential rains have collapsed the electrical installation of the emblematic building. Fixing it forces several nights of works that affect that judicial work. A problem that is not accidental, or exceptional, as recognized in official documentation of the Community of Madrid consulted by the country in which “repeated frequency” of electricity that dispells the fire protection systems, and the emergency lighting, “thereby putting the safety of people” is highlighted. As a result, the regional government has bought emergency, a new generator set.
“For many years, at the expense of transfer A, no investment in the building has been made,” explains María Jesús del Barco, magistrate dean judge of Madrid, about the project that promoted Esperanza Aguirre at the beginning of the century to concentrate all the judicial facilities in Valdebebas, and that now hopes to culminate Isabel Díaz Ayuso in 2028. “It is a very old building, with a lot to keep it in habitability until the city of justice is over: in recent years important reforms have been undertaken, ”he adds. “In summer we are hot, because the air conditioning does not work in all spaces, and the opposite happens to us,” he exemplifies. And it finishes: “The thing is wrong.”
Nothing better reflects that sentence than what happened with the rains of March. The building describes the ship, had long dragged leaks in the elevators’ holes. With the rain, everything got wet. And there were some problems like little amazing in a capital building for the justice system.
“We run out of light,” says magistrate dean judge of Madrid. “It was a day with several blackouts, because it was a barbarity the water that fell,” he adds. “We had to use another generator set of I do not know where, they caught to provide the service of the courts on guard,” continues on those in charge of arrests, corpses, or Habeas Corpus procedures. “It is a very old building.”
The halls of the Courts of Plaza de Castilla are a constant transfer of national police, civil guards, arrested with shackles and citizens suffocated by the tense waiting until they know their future. Because here the past decides today and tomorrow. Unless the electricity supply or any of the other patches that support the operation of the complex fails.
“The age of the building causes, repeatedly, electricity breakdowns in its facilities, which produce cuts in the electric fluid, and which have as a consequence the immediate lack of operation of the emergency and evacuation lighting, as well as the fire protection systems, putting themselves in serious danger with the safety of the people, both of the workers and of the citizens who access the building,” Community of Madrid has acquired a generator set. “The last one, of great magnitude, caused by the heavy torrential rains fallen in Madrid, collapsed the electrical installation of the building, leaving it totally inoperative, by flooding a large number of its rooms, and resulted in the need to reorganize, temporarily, the service of guard of the courts, deriving it to other judicial headquarters,” is recognized.
But that is not the only problem of courts. In 2024, the deficiencies detected by the technical inspection signed by the City Council technicians in 2022 had already to be spent, which emerged problems in the sections of structure and foundation, facades, covers, roofs, and sanitation networks.
Million euros in investments
That same year, the government undertook 2,489,387.66 euros of the building, which made emergency in the face of workers’ protests: the thermometers reached
In fact, more than 6.5 million euros in these courts have been invested in the last decade.
They are signs of wear of a central complex for the judicial system, at least until the regional government built in Valdebebas the new city of justice. At that time, the Courts of Plaza de Castilla will become the heart of the administrative district and attention to the citizen of Madrid, and will host the Civil Registry, in addition to new spaces for the attention of citizens, including halls for the celebration of weddings or acts of swearing and nationalities.
