This Tuesday is a very gray day for the no-to-logging movement in Madrid. The mood is very bad in the organizational groups on WhatsApp, where the neighbors who took part in the demonstrations to save the trees that will fall due to the extension of the subway line 11 are watching the videos that a neighbor, Marta, looks at. In the images, workers hired by the Ministry of Transport felled four Himalayan cedars in the Jimena Quirós Garden. Marta is one of the few neighbors who came to see and above all to record how the oldest and tallest trees fall from the entire list of trees that will fall due to the construction of the railway line and the City of Madrid The Council has approved. “I always thought the cedars would be saved,” said Azucena, a neighbor who has been fighting against logging since the movement began nearly a year ago.
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It was unthinkable for the neighbors that they would cut down the trees in Jimena Quiró's garden and on Paseo de la Infanta Isabel. These are large-scale specimens, necessary to counteract the pollution and noise that characterize the Atocha station area, one of the busiest points in Madrid. Also because they are part of the Landscape of Light, the only space in the capital that was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site just three years ago. To authorize the modification of an element of the light landscape, a cultural heritage report must be prepared and sent to UNESCO, as Culture Minister Ernest Urtasun, who represents the global organization's interests, commented two weeks ago. This means UNESCO can offer less environmentally harmful alternatives to carrying out the work. Urtasun sent a letter to the mayor of Madrid, José Luis Martínez-Almeida, and the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, asking them to arrange a meeting to discuss the matter. “The meeting was scheduled for next week, but we will try to urgently reschedule it for this Tuesday based on the information released,” a Culture Ministry spokesman said. The meeting is late because of the rows of cedars and shade trees that have already been cut down.
The Ministry of Transport, which is carrying out the work, has assured several times since February 2023 that it has studied the project and that the trees will be affected as little as possible. When the work began, the municipality of Madrid proposed cutting down 1,027 trees and transplanting almost 500. After the tireless struggle of the affected neighbors, they have changed this figure up to three times and the current proposal is to cut less than half of the original value. Neighbors who pushed the Department of Transportation to change the project criticized the fact that the criteria for carrying out the work was not to block traffic before saving the trees. The result of this criterion was to place the exit ramps for the trucks transporting the excavated earth on the sidewalks instead of on the street. In the case of Atocha, neighbors defend that the trees felled last Monday on Paseo de la Infanta Isabel could have been saved by temporarily cutting the bus lane. In the case of the Jimena Quirós Garden, the only alternative to save the trees was to change the construction method and carry out mine excavation, a method that can be dangerous for the workers and a proposal that the Community of Madrid has not agreed to. retrieved. “We can't do anything about it,” says Alicia Estefanía, one of the supporters of the neighborhood movement against logging in Atocha.
Although the loss of trees in Comillas, Madrid Río, Palos de la Frontera, Atocha and Conde de Casal has caused the No to Logging movement to lose strength, the residents' struggle is now focused on the Comillas neighborhood, in the Carabanchel district is the most affected area. The neighborhood park has looked like a wasteland for just over a month after more than 150 trees were cut down. The family association of the school that borders the park, the Peruvian public school and the Comillas neighborhood association have joined forces to demand that the Community of Madrid not follow its plan to install the tunnel boring machine that will excavate the entire route of the park will line in this space. The neighbors do not want to accept that more than 500 children under the age of 12 are studying for at least four years with a job of this magnitude less than 100 meters away.
At the remaining stations they can only record how they cut down the trees to demonstrate what the Ministry of Transport and the Madrid City Council have done with the capital's tree mass. According to the neighbors, this material will be useful if one of the complaints filed by the neighborhood associations and Ecologistas en Acción is upheld and the works are declared illegal. Or if the European Investment Bank, which finances much of the work and is also known as the climate bank for the projects it finances, agrees with neighbors who believe the company could withdraw the investment. “We will all pay the fine,” says another neighbor.
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