The death of a 20-year-old girl after half a palm tree fell on her, which broke for unknown reasons in the Raval neighborhood, has led the Barcelona City Council to take extraordinary measures to prevent a similar case from occurring in the future. The accidental mayor, Maria Eugènia Gay, announced this Friday that the City Council will open an “urgent” process to review more than 800 date palms in the city, that is, those that meet the characteristics of the one that fell yesterday. This was confirmed by Gay after the meeting that she had with members of the Parcs i Jardins area, as well as with the Urban Police and the emergency services.
The City Council has acknowledged that it received a complaint from a neighbor in March but that Parcs i Jardins reviewed the palm tree and did not observe “any anomaly”. However, he has also admitted that he did not check the nest.
The consistory has also announced that it will commission an external audit to an independent company to clarify the facts. In any case, the manager of Parcs i Jardins, Francesc Jiménez Gusi, has pointed out some preliminary causes: water stress due to the drought, the narrowing of the upper part of the palm tree and the presence of a parrot nest. He has added that any of the three could have caused the event or even a combination of several of them.
The Ombudsman of Barcelona has also opened an investigation to clarify the causes of the fatal accident that occurred yesterday between Emili Vendrell square and Joaquim Costa street in the Catalan capital, as have the Mossos d’Esquadra. The emergency teams could not do anything for the victim, who was already dead when they arrived, explained yesterday the head of the Barcelona Fire Brigade, Juan Carlos Cejalvo.
