Little Mohamed, 10, and Samir and Mamadou, 14, are busy picking up the ball when two agents from the Figueres City Police are preparing to close off the square where they have been exchanging shots and dribbles. It is approximately 10:30 p.m. “Weeks ago, twenty or thirty friends from the neighborhood would get together and we used to be here until eleven,” explains one of them, while the agents open the metal gate that closes Plaça Nova Icària. It is the solution that the City Council has adopted to guarantee neighborhood rest, a historical claim of the working-class neighborhood of Les Vivendes del Parc, where about a thousand people reside.
In recent years they have complained about the noise, until the wee hours of the morning, that exists in this public space and that prevents them from resting. The noise due to the excess of decibels becomes more acute in summer when there is more life on the street and the windows of many homes are wide open to make the summer heat more bearable.
In this hard square that has a space for children’s games, small children run around, shout and laugh out loud accompanied by their mothers, adolescents who play with their gang, bike acrobats and, before the square was closed at night, even adults gathered with their loudspeakers late at night. Playing in silence is a chimera, but not respecting the neighborhood rest is an infraction classified as minor in the civility ordinance. “There are many people who have to get up early and with the rallying and shouting until the wee hours of the morning, you couldn’t rest,” explains Pep Burbeil, president of the Vivendes del Parc neighborhood association.
Attesting to this is Claudia Micense, a neighbor of one of the blocks facing the square, who gets up at six to go to work. “Many days, especially on weekends, she would go to work completely awake; the scandal was excessive ”, she affirms. She acknowledges that with the closure of the square “now I do have rest.”
Where he also gets up early is at the home of Rosabel Esteba and Pablo Arce, who consider that the closure of this public space between ten at night and seven in the morning has been “the easiest solution.” In fact, the measure adopted by the Consistory has not solved the problem, far from it; it has simply moved it a few meters. Part of those who used to gather in Nova Icària square are now in Carmela Juárez square. And they bother the nearest neighbors. “You can’t imagine the noise they make at night; It really is as if it were noon”, explains Esteba, who believes that there is a lack of “civic awareness and respect for others, of respecting the night rest hours”.
The Consistory is studying what measures to adopt beyond reinforcing police patrolling. Regarding the closure, the mayor Jordi Masquef (Junts) says that, for the moment, “it does not have an expiration date” and, although he acknowledges that it may not be the best solution, he considers it “the least bad of all”.
Users understand that it may disturb early risers, but believe that the closure is too early. “I understand the neighbors, but ten at night is too early, they should extend until eleven or midnight,” says Samira Garbaui, sitting with her daughters on a bench in the alternative plaza. “In this heat you cannot be at home; I understand the complaints, but I cannot go out with my son before; I finish work at eight”, says Yassin. Of the same opinion is Mari. “There have always been children playing here and it has never been a problem, and in summer, with the heat it is, we don’t go out at six,” she adds. “The closing seems good to me, but ten o’clock is too early and more so in summer,” she concludes.
