Quote: ‘Putting the station inside the park, they’ll have to cut down 500 trees in Madrid Río park, which includes what was the historic Arganzuela park, planted in 1969’
Thousands of people gathered in Madrid on Saturday to protest against plans to cut down over 1,000 trees in two parks for an extension of the city’s metro system.
“We only found out when they started to put the barriers up,” said Susana de la Higuera of the Pasillo Verde Imperial neighbourhood association.
“By putting the station inside the park, they’ll have to cut down more than 500 trees in the Madrid Río park, which includes what was the historic Arganzuela park, which was planted in 1969,” she said.
The regional Madrid government had originally planned to build two new stations on line 11 of the metro in streets south-west of the city centre.
Now the stations will be located in the old Arganzuela section of the Madrid Río park and in the nearby Comillas park.
According to the new plan, the construction work will involve cutting down 1,027 trees of whuch some are 50 years old. Another 348 trees will also be moved.
A coalition of neighbourhood groups and from the environmental NGO Ecologists in Action have raised concerns. Two separate appeals have been lodged to try to halt the works, with a demonstration on Saturday in Madrid Río.
Tens of thousands of people have signed a petition to save the trees.
De la Higuera said the loss of the large London plane trees, which provide much-needed shade during the merciless Madrid summer, would be devastating for the community.
“The people who are grandparents now took their children there and now they take their grandchildren there,” said Susana de la Higuera of the Pasillo Verde Imperial neighbourhood association.
“It’s also where the schoolkids hang out because it’s the only place where there’s really shade.
“But it’s a really popular park that’s used not only by people from Arganzuela, but also by people from all over Madrid. We just don’t understand this barbaric idea. There’s no other word for it,” she added.
Ecologists in Action said: “The metro works would represent one of the greatest arboricides in Madrid’s recent history.
“The reasons for this decision seem to spring from the need to smooth out the management of the works and to reduce the effects on traffic as much as possible by moving construction away from the public thoroughfare.
“This is further proof of the Madrid government’s disdain for our natural heritage.”
Madrid’s mayor, José Luis Martínez-Almeida, said: “Not a single tree would be lost, as laws required that the 1,027 felled trees be replaced by almost 20,000 new ones.”
“They’re happier to cut down a tree than cut off a street,” said De la Higuera.
“For us, it’s about the trees but also about what the park means to us. It’s been part of our life as a community since our grandparents’ time. They’re ripping up the life of the community,” they said.
The Spanish capital hosted an annual conference on parks and public gardens, with a focus on green spaces as natural systems of citizen health.
Storm Filomena two years ago recorded the heaviest snowfalls Madrid in 50 years, affecting almost 50% of the city’s 1.74m trees – with the loss of 80,000.
2022 was the hottest on record in Spain, with heatwaves in May and during the summer seeing temperatures above 40C (104F) in much of the country.
