It’s Barrio vs. Madrid in Spain’s New Civil War : Urbanization: Suburb declares independence and launches a publicity blitz after city tries to seize land for luxury chalets.

We don’t want bread!

We don’t want wine!

We want the mayor...

Hanging from a pine!

That’s the first verse of a new national anthem adopted by an angry suburb of Madrid that says it’s seceding--and the song pretty much sums up the feelings of the 500 residents. They charge that the Madrid City Council is trying to snatch their homes at a fraction of fair market value, and they are waging a savvy public relations campaign to stop it.

The skirmishes have included a “Provisional Transitional Government,” announced earlier this month, and demonstrations in front of the Cuban Embassy demanding political asylum. Madrid officials are not amused--but other residents are beginning to ask questions.

The Barrio de Cerro Belmonte is a 20th-Century urban anachronism that began as a village on the outskirts of Madrid about 70 years ago, without water, drainage or even paved roads. As Madrid has spread, so Cerro Belmonte has been surrounded by modern developments and tower blocks of flats. Many of the families have lived there all their lives, paying for the installation of amenities and building their own houses, some of which have been expanded as their savings allowed and now boast modern bathrooms, kitchens, central heating and telephones.

The owners, many of whom are retired, tend their gardens, lovingly planting grape vines, fig trees, and flower and vegetable plots.

But 20th-Century speculation has caught up with them, and the Madrid City Council has plans to develop the area into an estate of luxury chalets that would be sold at prices beyond the dreams of the Belmonteses. Taking advantage of a 1985 land law, the area was designated a development zone, and the residents were offered money to move into alternative accommodations on the other side of the city--financial compensation many times lower than the market value. Virtually all the residents rejected the council’s offer, so a year ago the council placed a compulsory purchase order on the 30,000 square meters of Cerro Belmonte.

But if the City Council thought that the affair would end at this point, with the sale of the planned chalets adding to its coffers, they had not counted on the Belmonteses or their lawyer, dynamic 28-year-old Esther Castellanos. Until this year Castellanos’ legal practice had concentrated on divorce and matrimonial cases, but she has taken up the challenge with all the fighting spirit of a latter-day Spanish Civil War heroine. Although she admits to no political affiliation or ambition, she is masterminding a publicity campaign that would make any political leader proud.

Realizing that Spain’s notoriously laborious court system was unlikely to be of any help, she decided to embarrass the City Council, whose members face reelection early next year, with a series of publicity stunts.

In August, when relations between Spain and Cuba were at their lowest ebb in many years, a group of Belmonteses demonstrated outside the Cuban Embassy in Madrid and requested political asylum. Fidel Castro’s reply was to invite 24 of them, whose ages varied between 10 and 84, for a fully paid 10-day visit to Cuba, where he treated them as VIPs.

Then, earlier this month, the barrio issued a unilateral declaration of independence, naming Maria Teresa Quirol as head of state and threatening--tongue in cheek--to bar access to the barrio by instituting passport control and customs posts. It said it might also issue its own postage stamps and currency.

These stunts have caught the ear of the public, which is asking embarrassing questions. Why, people want to know, have the residents been offered only 5,018 pesetas (about $54) per square meter for their land when the going rate in the area is more than 20 times that? And who will profit when the land is sold for expensive developments?

Castellanos and her supporters are determined to continue the struggle. Recently they announced their intention to join forces with other barrios facing similar threats--the Kingdom of Cerro Belmonte allied with the neighboring Principality of Villaamil or the Country of Penagrande, for example.

Cerro Belmonte’s red-and-white flag is already flying, and residents set up a symbolic roadblock twice a day, barring access to the barrio.

Madrid City Hall says it is not prepared to join their pantomime. Jose Luis Garro, second deputy mayor of Madrid with responsibility for urbanization, said: “I am not prepared to buy tickets for the Belmonte Circus.”

Castellanos countered: “If we are the circus, who are the clowns?”