A resident of Amposta has filed a criminal complaint against the mayor and the president of the Rice Chamber of Montsià for the nuisance he claims is caused by the sound of the hourly siren that for nearly a century emits four times a day as an hourly warning.
The lawsuit, filed in court number 1 of Amposta, which has already opened preliminary proceedings, came after a municipal administrative request.
The council ruled out that the mermaid, recognized within the Inventory of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of the Terres de l’Ebre, did not comply with any regulations. However, the Cambra Arrossera del Montsià provisionally decided to stop emitting the sound, which has caused surprise in the neighborhood. The entity and the municipal government defend maintaining this historic siren.
The request at the City Council, presented last March, gave rise to an inspection by the local police, who appeared at the Cambra Arrossera facilities three weeks ago to carry out a first sonometry. It was then that the entity decided, provisionally, to stop issuing the four daily audible warnings.
However, the analysis of the results led the council to completely discard the neighbor’s claims. Despite admitting that the council has yet to develop specific regulations in this regard, the mayor, Adam Tomàs, defends that the siren does not violate any environmental regulation. He remembers that it only sounds for about fifteen seconds four times a day, as a time signal that for nearly a hundred years has warned cooperative workers and farmers. None during the night: at nine in the morning, one at noon, three in the afternoon and seven in the evening.
“It’s surreal that this is being asked of us right now. It could be anything else: like a motorcycle that passes under the house or a car alarm that connects and rings for a while. These are specific issues and it doesn’t make any sense.” , he sentenced.
Given this response, the plaintiff neighbor would have decided to take the case to criminal proceedings, directing the complaint specifically against the mayor and the president of the Chamber Arrossera, a position that Àlex Morales has held for a few days, replacing Marcel Matamoros. In the preliminary proceedings opened by court number 1, new sonometry tests are requested and compliance with current regulations is demonstrated.
The judicial procedure and the commotion caused has generated confusion in the city and in the Cambra Arrossera itself. For nearly a hundred years, the characteristic siren had sounded punctually, becoming one more element of the vast urban landscape. As a result, its sound was recently incorporated into the Inventory of the Immaterial Cultural Heritage of the Terres de l’Ebre.
“It is a historical siren, not a productive one,” remarked Morales, the new president of the entity, who recalls that it also functioned to warn the population of the air attacks by fascist aviation during the Spanish civil war.
The entity, which has not received any court order to stop sounding it, is now considering the possibility of resuming daily warnings.
The president of the Chamber Arrossera is surprised at the lack of knowledge of the type of specific problem that the complainant may have – medical or otherwise – in reaching court in a case like this.
The mayor, for his part, also defended keeping the siren. “If a judge at some point determines that it exceeds the levels of we don’t know what regulations, let’s assume that the Cambra Arrossera will have to abide by it. But we defend its continuity, like the bells of Poblenou or the bell tower of Amposta. We find these controversies absurd,” has settled.
