Each morning at República de Chile and Nazaret schools in Madrid’s San Blas district, staff check the playgrounds for syringes and drug debris before letting students in. The checks are necessary: children have found used needles on school grounds, and some have picked them up with their bare hands. Drug users gather just meters from the classrooms. Public drug use has become a routine sight for hundreds of students.
Arancha Mitjavila, director of República de Chile, says the situation has become unbearable. Years of complaints and police action have failed to solve the problem; they have only moved it around. After police broke up a large encampment in Parque Paraíso, its former residents spread into other parts of the park and nearby streets. From school windows, children see people injecting drugs. Others cut hair or live in public view, scenes that have changed how students see their own neighborhood.
A murder in Parque Paraíso in early May 2026 drew renewed attention to persistent insecurity in the San Blas district, Vozpópuli reported.
Many parents feel powerless. Some children walk to school with only older siblings because their parents leave early for work. Sergio, a local father, says his nine-year-old son already asks about “those strange people” he sees every morning. At Nazaret, a mother recalls a child drawing pictures in class of people using drugs. Several families say drug litter poses a constant risk on school property.
Officials say they are responding. Madrid Salud teams visit daily, while the city council says police are on the scene and working with national forces. The district’s councillor, Almudena Maíllo, has promised more funding for addiction services soon. Parents and teachers say these steps fall short. Community groups, including the Simancas-Parque Paraíso platform, have held six protests in two years and taken their concerns to the Madrid Assembly, but the basic problem remains.
Political disagreements have stalled a coordinated response. The PSOE and Más Madrid want a working group bringing together the city and regional governments, with national officials involved too. They argue that police alone cannot solve deeper problems such as drug trafficking and narcopisos, alongside social neglect. Information from the Government Delegation, both the city and the region have refused to join such a group, leaving families caught between bureaucracy and daily risk.
A September 2026 report by Vozpópuli said the problem in Parque Paraíso extends beyond visible drug use: users are often seen relieving themselves in public, sometimes near children playing in the park. This proximity between drug users and local families has heightened concerns about safety and public health in the area.
San Blas’s problems go back decades. The area once housed Los Módulos, a prefabricated housing project that became one of Europe’s basic drug markets in the 1980s. The effects of marginalization and poor urban planning are still felt today. Other Spanish regions have faced school crises, but the open drug use around Madrid’s classrooms makes San Blas stand out for its scale and urgency.
On Avenida de Arcentales near Simancas metro, drug debris is common on the sidewalks, including syringes and burnt spoons. Residents say the district never fully recovered from the 1980s. The arrival of fentanyl has made things worse. Teachers and social workers now see users whose condition points to this powerful synthetic opioid. For children, the impact is immediate: exposure to addiction and neglect, while public disorder shapes their sense of safety and normal life.
Madrid’s authorities face a clear choice: address the deep social and health crisis with coordinated action, or risk letting another generation grow up surrounded by problems that should never be part of childhood.
