European Parliament to Discuss Arboricide in Madrid’s Metro Line 11 Expansion

The text will be analyzed in the first session of the return to parliamentary activity of the community body, scheduled for around September 20 and 21, parliamentary sources inform this newspaper. The successive elections in Spain have prevented it from arriving earlier, since it is customary in the European Parliament to leave local issues aside while there are calls to the polls in force, so as not to interfere in the electoral processes.

The petition, formulated by the Regional Federation of Neighborhood Associations of Madrid (FRAMV), has been included on the agenda at the initiative of the MEP Sira Rego, of Izquierda Unida and the group of the European Left. “The neighbors have given a lesson in mobilization to fight against this nonsense and now we want the European Union to get involved in paralyzing this outrage by Ayuso and Almeida,” Rego explained to Somos Madrid about the reasons for supporting this demand.

The Community of Madrid halted the Metro works in February after intense neighborhood protests in Arganzuela, which have continued ever since, supported by organizations such as Ecologistas en Acción and have spread to other affected streets, such as Áncora. The City Council, for its part, announced a few days ago that the logging license requested by the Ayuso Government was “expired” and that it would have to request a new one to undertake the works.

“There is an alternative to the arboricide of the City Council and the Community of Madrid, and it is up to the European institutions to listen to the neighbors and side with the defense of health and the environment,” defends MEP Sira Rego.

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In addition to going through the debate and analysis of the European Parliament, the Petitions Committee can also request the European Commission to initiate a preliminary investigation to find out if community legislation is being respected or not being complied with, as well as transfer the petition to other affected bodies, in this case, for example, the European Investment Bank, which finances the Metro works.

The idea of ​​bringing the neighborhood struggle for the survival of trees to the European Parliament arose from a visit to Brussels by the neighborhood association Parque Sí in Chamberí, invited by Rego, to screen the documentary at the community headquarters of general interestwhich narrates the struggle of a group of Madrid residents to recover a park promised by the Government and which was finally transformed into a golf course.

Work to expand Metro line 11 began last November, although it slowed down in some points in Madrid Río and Paseo de las Delicias due to the aforementioned neighborhood protests over the planned felling of trees. The Ayuso government has stopped any logging until it studies in detail whether it could save more trees than it had initially thought to remove.

The planned layout of this new underground line will connect Plaza Elíptica and Conde de Casal. Almost seven additional kilometers of tunnel that will pass through Palos de la Frontera and Atocha, in addition to creating two new stations in Comillas and Madrid Río.