He has announced that by 2027, when the second legislature of José Luis Martínez Almeida ends, the city will have about double canine areas that currently. The news makes owners already, of which 323,175 are dogs, according to the 2024 census. There are no doubt for users that in a city where there is approximately one dog for every 11 inhabitants more than these areas are needed from these areas – of which there are “more than a hundred”, according to the City Council -, but the associations of neighbors dedicated to pets conditions and are not even well counted.
The term canine area includes two typologies: the pipicán, whose central objective is for pets to do their needs in a controlled space, and the canine parks, which are more focused on enjoying outdoor activities. Both must be spaces delimited by a perimeter fence so that dogs do not escape and must have adapted water sources for animals, bins and bag dispensers for excrement and banks for the owners.
The City Council speaks of “more than 100 ″ existing canine areas, without clarifying types and without specifying the exact number, although according to the data published on its website, it would be about 135 that contemplate as operational. According to that figure, there would be 2,393 medium dogs for each pipicán, although the data does not represent reality, as this newspaper has been able to verify, because there are many areas that are not registered. Because animals have never imported him, ”says Rosa de Mingo, president of the Canipark Association, which defends the canine areas.
The Consistory has refused to offer the exact figure of these spaces in the city, “says the neighbor, who is because” they do not have it ” -, and he has not wanted to give more information or clarify doubts regarding the lack of rigor of said database. De Mingo, resident of San Blas, considers that they now consider putting more to say, although there is not even control over existing ones.
“Canine areas are increasingly necessary in the city, since the number of censored dogs in Madrid,” says the Councilor of Más Madrid, José Luis Nieto. “This trend forces new areas for planning, but also to care and maintain in decent conditions those that already exist, something that the Almeida government does not do.”
The Consistory has not clarified where the 60 canine areas will be located that, they assure, are being built or built in the present legislature, something that worries the neighbors of the neighborhoods with less endowments. One of the most popular in the center – the fourth that has more dogs – is almost next to Arganzuela, in the Casino de la Reina Park, in the Ambassadors neighborhood. “There are large dogs and small dogs at all hours,” says Manuel Osuna, neighbor of Lavapiés. In the core of this district it is more difficult to find where to place a pipicán due to the lack of land and the hardness of most squares and parks, and nobody knows if among the 237 that they must be ready in 2027 there will be some nearby.
According to Manuel, seeing a person with a dog walking through the streets of the center is a happy indicative that there are still neighbors in the most tourist district in the city, but also that, having not enough spaces close to them, they have no other option to get their pets to make their basic needs through the streets of the neighborhood. “The one who is young goes to the retirement to take his dog, but he who is older or cannot get away from home has to settle for that,” he says.
“Systematic” abandonment and carelessness
In the Tetuán district, one of the most dogs (14,600), to the Pipicán of the San Germán Park were so tired of the dirt and lack of care that they organized through a WhatsApp group to clean it on their own. “We start from a park totally full of Cacas, which people no longer wanted to enter,” explains Alberto, a member of, as they have called this initiative. Since then, 200 users from other district pipicanes have joined and have managed to “rescue them” with their efforts.
But for each canine area of Tetuán to have a bin and in one of them the operators redistributed the gravel of the soil, had to file complaints in the plenary sessions of the district. “They have paid attention to us for tiredness, but what we can not be to be with a full blow of the district so that they weekly do the cleanliness,” Alberto emphasizes.
José Luis Nieto says that abandonment and carelessness “is systematic throughout the city”, and the situation is well known by the Consistory. In addition to Tetuán, in the plenary sessions of the district meetings in Villa de Vallecas, in Latin, in Salamanca, in Hortaleza, in Centro, in Arganzuela and in Linear City there have been claims for the state of the Pypics.
The City Council has hired the company Valoriza Content specifically for the maintenance of children’s parks, areas of older, sports circuits and canine areas. Pedro Morán, responsible for urban sanitation of the Comisiones Obreras Madrid Union, points out that the Consistory took out the specifications of the contract with little personal for the amount of work to be done: “Companies take offers down to enter the tender. The contracts leave without price review, so if the company signs for six years, each year will have to do their job with the same budget than at first, although there are more areas or more work”.
According to Alberto, the operators have so many chores that have told neighbors that they must choose which places to go, and almost always end up prioritizing those who are destined to the enjoyment of the human being. “The City Council is the one who should sanction the company if it does not meet the conditions of cleaning and maintenance. Each worker does their tasks, but cannot do those of three people,” says Morán.
That is why the complaints of users on social networks are common for totally corroded or rebobed bins of dogs, land full of gaps of several centimeters deep that are never filled and even ponds with rotten water. “In Brazil Avenue, with Juan Maragall poet street, there was a pipicán with a hole full of water whereby there was an episode of parasites in a dog,” says Alberto. The “green pond” hole, as the neighbors call this pipicán since then, was not repaired until this summer, when the water had already dried.
“It is not a problem only for dogs and their owners: in the end, we are talking about how public space is conceived and how urban green parks and green spaces are generally taken care of. The PP model is that of a city-decorated city for tourists, where to consume and circulate, instead of a city of neighborhoods with meeting places,” Nieto underlines.
Tetuán’s own neighbors are the example that pipicanes are meeting sites, where with the justification of lowering the dog, people take the opportunity to relax and make neighborhood life. According to Alberto, the Tetuan dog group has not only helped restore the canine areas of the district, but also to rescue lost pets. Recently, they even had their own “dog day”, in which owners and animals gathered to participate in a masterclass Canine training, raffle prizes and eat snacks. “The dogs in the end is an excuse,” says Alberto, who has two. “Now everyone wants to use this pipicán [el de la calle de San Germán]because it is clean and because there is an atmosphere. ”
