A hundred people, according to the organization, have gathered this Sunday against the felling of trees that the Madrid City Council intends to carry out to reform the underground parking lot of the Plaza de Santa Ana, in the Centro district, which would mean the elimination of 85% of its trees.
Under the motto ‘The trees of Santa Ana are neither touched nor cut down’, the neighborhood association of Sol and Barrio de Las Letras has called this rally to try to stop “this new urban arboricide”, which, according to what they have denounced, , “it is not the first in the city.” In the Madrid Río area, more than 500 specimens were cut down at the end of last year for the expansion of metro line 11.
Of the 54 trees currently existing in Santa Ana, the City Council plans to cut down 28 and transplant 19, meaning that 47 of the 54 existing trees would disappear, including cypresses, Japanese cherry trees and horse chestnut trees.
For this reason, the associations have asked the City Council chaired by José Luis Martínez-Almeida to reconsider the construction project for the Santa Ana parking lot, to replant trees in the more than 100 empty or blinded tree pits existing in the neighborhood, as well as that a plan be implemented to provide the districts with a greater mass of forestry.
Likewise, residents of the area have criticized that, while the City Council plans this work, “the claim for reform and reopening of a nearby municipal ‘parking’ for residents, the one on Alameda Street, which has been closed for five years, is ignored. “.
“One more square that is threatened by Almeida’s chainsaw, it seems that there is not a single tree in this city that is not threatened,” lamented the councilor of Más Madrid, Lucía Lois, who has also criticized that the city’s mayor “gives up 47 million euros a year” by privatizing the parking lot.
The councilor of the Municipal Socialist Group, Antonio Giraldo, for his part, has asked the Government of the capital to “abandon this dynamic contrary to the climate emergency, especially in a city like Madrid.”
This concentration has been the first of a series of protest actions that the neighborhood group plans to carry out to stop logging, along with an online signature collection, to which, so far, they have joined 1,600 people
