Tired of being the backyard of the metropolitan area of ??Barcelona, ??Montcada i Reixac has decided to say enough and claim financial compensation for having to support 29 kilometers of road and rail infrastructure and various supra-municipal facilities that quarter this city of 37,000 inhabitants and hinder the quality of life of their neighbors. The mayor, Laura Campos, claims that the municipality has a “special regime”, as there are already five defined in Catalonia, and a regulatory framework for the “servitudes it lends to Barcelona” which is a “recognition of the ‘effort’ of the population.
The creation of this law that recognizes the particularity of the municipality “would be pioneering in Catalonia” and should establish compensations especially of a fiscal nature, according to the mayoress.
Yesterday Campos presented the document Montcada diu prou, a vindictive decalogue born after analyzing the report of the Barcelona Regional urban development agency. The figures are compelling: the 160,000 vehicles per day that travel along the C-58 on the edge of several neighborhoods, the impact of 350,000 more cars brought about by the liberalization of tolls on the C-33 – and the corresponding loss of taxes for in Consistori–, the 510 trains of the five lines (R2, R3, R4, R7 and AVE) that cross the city, with five stations with level crossings…
The municipality has 41.76 hectares occupied by environmental infrastructures for metropolitan use, such as the sewage treatment plant and the eco-park, in addition to the unburied high-voltage lines, the gas pipeline that does not serve the municipality, the 40 kilometers of hydrographic network with the Besòs or 34% of areas of ecological connectivity in a critical situation due to the presence of these infrastructures. “We have earned the right to claim our rights, to alleviate the injustice of the distribution of resources and to reverse metropolitan solidarity for the benefit of our municipality,” said Campos.
Located in Vallès Occidental but next door to Barcelona, ??Montcada and Reixac have been suffering for decades from infrastructure that no one wants in their city, such as the missing incinerator, which operated for 30 years, until 2004, or the much-questioned cement plant of neighborhood of Can Sant Joan, with different resources and complaints for environmental pollution.
17.1 million euros, of which 4.3 are direct economic costs, and 12.8 million, indirect costs “caused by barrier effects, such as level crossings”. “For many years we have been paying a very high servitude with an overload of infrastructures that have a great impact on the city”, indicated the mayor.
There are also harmful health effects. The report details that 24% of the population “is subjected to night noise that exceeds 55 decibels”, while 11% suffer from 65 decibels during the day. The document proposes actions to alleviate the inconvenience, such as the installation of an acoustic screen in the C-33.