Research on Madrid’s Network of Domestic Work Organizations
Bremda Acosta (GGFUP, 2017, Location: Madrid)
There are several bronze “urban statues” around Madrid, especially in the neighborhood of Malasaña, that depict ordinary people doing everyday things. There are many statues such as “the reader,” “the young woman walking” and “the student from Malasaña.” Some people have confessed to confusing these statues for people so I can see why it was ideal for El Grupo Turin, an organization Sedoac is part of, to make these statues come to life by dressing them like domestic workers. Yesterday, July 13th, at 8:30 am, five women from El Grupo Turin, including Sedoac’s president, decided to dress four of these statues with aprons, cleaning gloves and other cleaning supplies before going to the Ministry of Employment and Social Security. They were followed by several news chains such TeleMadrid and Televisión Española that asked them about their stories and also recorded the many songs they sang along the way. My favorite part of this event was when we took the metro on our way to the Ministry and Rafaela Pimentel started to sing about an undocumented woman named Adela who is suffering as a domestic worker because she does not have the same rights as other workers. The director of Change.org in Spain, Jose Antonio Ritoré, who I did not even know was part of Change.org, took the metro with us since he had to give us access to entering the Ministry and asked that I send him the video of the sing “Adela.” I was also asked to scan my camera equipment along with those of the news chains before entering the Ministry and since I had been told about this event through a WhatsApp message in such an unofficial way, having to do this kind of legitimized the importance of the event.