Home alarms in Madrid: protected wherever you are.

How we protect you

Home security in Madrid: how we protect you

In Madrid the homes we protect are lived in, then left: every working day, for a week of business travel, for the school holidays. So the free survey starts with your routine as much as the layout. Who comes and goes: the cleaner, the children back from the international school in Pozuelo, the gardener who trims the hedges? Which door do you actually use? In a chalet in Las Rozas it is often the one from the garage, so the keypad goes there and that door gets a sensor. Camera detectors cover the hallway and the stairs, sensors go on every door to the outside, and the siren goes where it is heard on every floor.

Say you are in a meeting in Frankfurt when someone forces the garden door of your house in Majadahonda at eleven in the morning, with the street empty and the neighbours at work. The camera detector sends images and sound to Segurma’s Alarm Receiving Centre, and an operator there decides from what they see whether anyone needs to be called. If it is a burglar, the police are told, with the images to prove it, the siren starts inside, and your phone buzzes in the meeting room. If it is your teenager home early from school, nobody is sent. That is a burglar alarm connected to the police, working while you work.

The app turns this into smart home security you actually use. Arm the flat from the taxi on the M-30, check from your hotel that the house in Boadilla is armed, and disarm it for the cleaner on their usual morning without sharing the code. With the Kit Tranquilidad Plus, the IP camera gives you live view with sound, which is handy when the children get home before you do and you want to see them come through the door. And if you cannot remember whether you armed it before the school run, the app answers that too.

A winter storm can take the power out in the urbanisations around Boadilla and Las Rozas, and fibre in a chalet can drop for a day. The control panel talks to the centre over the internet and over the 4G/5G network and carries a backup battery, so neither leaves the house unwatched. That is what lets you stop worrying on the plane: when you are in Lisbon on Monday and London on Thursday, Segurma’s centre is watching your flat in Chamberí or your house in Pozuelo around the clock, the police are called if it is real, and you hear about it as soon as they do.

When nobody is there

Holiday homes, empty months and squatters in Madrid

Madrid empties on a timetable everyone knows. In August much of the city leaves for the coast or the north, and whole streets of chalets in Majadahonda and Las Rozas have their shutters down for weeks. Families who follow the British and international school calendar often fly home for most of the summer, and again at Christmas and Easter, while people who travel for work leave a flat in Chamberí empty from Monday to Thursday. Plenty of Madrid owners also have a second home on the coast, so the city flat stands empty exactly while they are by the sea. No car in the drive and post in the letterbox are easy for anyone to read.

An empty flat in Retiro or a shuttered chalet in Las Rozas is as tempting to squatters as any beach house. Once they are living there, getting them out normally goes through the courts and takes months. If the police hear about it while the door is still being forced, they have a far better chance of stopping it there and then. So an anti-squatter alarm in Madrid has to be monitored and checked on camera, with the alert going to the police during the break-in and to you on the beach in Cornwall. Leave a tag with the neighbour who stays in Pozuelo through August, or with the cleaner who checks the flat, and the app shows every visit.