María Ruiz I Granada, (EFE).- The Northern district of Granada registers three blackouts every hour despite the fact that Endesa invests an average of 1,500 euros per year in each of its neighbors, a figure far removed from the 18 euros per inhabitant in other points of this capital of Andalusia and that serves to shed light on a problem that combines drugs, hooking and years of struggle in the neighborhoods.
It is Granada, but it could be any humble neighborhood in Seville, Madrid, Almería or Barcelona, because the Northern district has the repeated image of a dead end, of families that pay for electricity that does not arrive, of the smell of marijuana and police presence.
The residents of the area suffer three blackouts every hour, a harder figure in winters without heating or in the face of heat waves like these days that turn the neighborhood into hell.
And although the figures are indisputable, Endesa responds to the demands for more investment by expanding power in a neighborhood to which the company has allocated 8 million to reinforce the electrical infrastructure and digitize the network, steps that want to give light to an area that continues to sleep it
These company plans are made “360 degrees” to shield the low, medium and high voltage of a district that adds the expansion of the Pulianas Substation, which has doubled its power, with new transformers that also multiply its capacity from 20 to 40 megawatt amps.
Lights and shadows
Granada has some 1,125 transformation centers, although 97% of the incidents due to overload linked to electricity fraud, almost always linked to the cultivation of marijuana, are registered in the same 18 centers.
These 18 centers are distributed throughout La Paz, Haza Grande or Caserío de Montijo, with high-end locks and shiny booths, to attend to some 4,800 supplies, less than half of them under contract, according to Endesa sources have indicated to EFE.
To combat fraud and shield the security that is lost when residents fiddle with the cables to power their homes, Endesa has invested in new technologies, has strengthened inspections and has systems in place to remotely reactivate “leads” melted by snags.
However, this multi-gang fight against electricity fraud does not change the reality of families with contracts, who pay their bills and live in the dark in a neighborhood that has been in the same fight for nearly fifteen years.
The good ones and the bad ones
Endesa also has the good and the bad. There are the good ones, the inspectors who check every time a fuse blows, who respond to blackouts, who chat with the neighbors; and the bad ones.
The bad guys uncover meters, verify the supply leak, provide the measurements to the State security forces and are in charge of cutting the hook-ups.
“You talk to them and you know that more than 80 or 90% of the neighbors are good people, that they can no longer leave the neighborhood, that they try to get ahead, that they pay their bills…”, explains Carlos, one of the “good ”.
He knows the streets of Norte like the back of his hand and knows that, for example, La Paz increases its electricity consumption three times in five years or that the so-called “Hotel Luz”, a building dedicated to growing marijuana, spends the same electricity as one of the hospitals in Granada.
Iñaki is one of the bad guys and he acts with gloves, with PPE and his face covered, almost always in special operations with agents who enter buildings with almost all homes hooked to light.
Iñaki and Carlos say that the cultivation of marijuana spreads to other points like an oil stain and leaves, in May alone, fifteen interventions in the province that go beyond the Northern district.
Of these fifteen interventions in homes, in four of them the level of electricity fraud reached one hundred percent of what was supplied and in another six it exceeded 85%.
light an exit
The Northern district of Granada has a powerful social movement that demands improvements, also through the judge, and adds an institutional table at which all the protagonists sit down to glimpse a solution that does not arrive.
And the power is reinforced because a contract requires the company to guarantee the electricity that some suck for other purposes, an infinite mess that stresses thousands of neighbors who continue in dim light.
The volume of electricity that is stolen in Spain to grow marijuana was 2.2 terawatts in 2022, the same consumption as the city of Seville according to Endesa data, which generates security and supply problems and collides with questionable criminal punishment by those involved.
The Northern district of Granada is the reflection of those neighborhoods with more drugs and fewer rights, with the energy to maintain three industrial estates but which pulls candles, areas in which tension rises because many of their problems remain in the dark. EFE