‘No one has explained this stupidity’: the citizens fighting back in Madrid’s war on trees

The Plaza de Santa Ana, which sits at the heart of Madrid’s literary quarter, is home to statues of Spain’s two greatest dramatists – Pedro Calderón de la Barca and Federico García Lorca – as well as one of the many bars where Ernest Hemingway did battle with his thirst. It is also home to dozens of trees that are already beginning to bud in anticipation of spring.

The question on residents’ minds is how many more springs the trees will see. In recent weeks, the neighbourhood has become the latest flashpoint in a series of protests against the felling of mature trees during key building works in the Spanish capital.

The debate over how to balance the protection of the city’s green spaces with its transport needs intensified a year ago when residents and environmental groups rose up against plans to fell more than 1,000 trees in two popular parks in south-west Madrid to make way for the enlargement of line 11 of the metro system.

Although their continuing campaign has persuaded the regional government to halve the number of trees felled, the chainsaws have not fallen silent in Madrid. The metro extension now threatens trees in a Unesco world heritage site near the Prado museum and the Retiro park, while renovation of the car park under the Plaza de Santa Ana could result in the loss of 28 of the 54 trees on its surface.

Campaigners argue the regional government and the Madrid city council – which are both run by the conservative People’s party (PP) – are pushing through such projects without properly consulting residents or exploring options that would significantly reduce their environmental and social impacts.

They also accuse the authorities of putting expediency and minimising the disruption to traffic before people’s rights and needs. Susana de la Higuera of the Pasillo-Verde Imperial neighbourhood association said that while the protests she and others began in February last year have saved 500 trees and attracted huge media interest, lessons are still not being learned.

“If it wasn’t for us citizens and what we did a year ago, they would have cut down 1,000 trees,” she said. “But we’ve obviously seen that they could cut down fewer – we’ve proved that.”

Víctor Rey, chairman of the Sol y Barrio de las Letras neighbourhood association, said the Plaza de Santa Ana works are another case in point. People living in the neighbourhood – which has already been altered by the proliferation of tourist rentals and bar and restaurant terraces to cater for them – now face a loss of tree shade in one of the area’s few communal spaces.

“The square has been turned into a place of terraces and walkways – it’s no longer the neighbourhood meeting place that a lot of people remember playing in as children,” said Rey. “The city council isn’t really thinking about things and so we’re seeing trees being cut down and parks being dug up. We don’t have a single park in the barrio or a big square. This is the only plaza we have. If they destroy it, it would be a disaster.”

Environmental groups say the failure to protect trees is dangerously misguided in a city where summer temperatures can rise past 40C (104F) and where a lack of vegetation and a preponderance of concrete and hard surfaces in the centre is causing a “heat island effect”. According to a survey last year, Madrid’s urban centre is one of the world’s most extreme heat islands, with temperatures 8.5C higher there than in rural surroundings.

Jesús Martín Hurtado, an architect and spokesperson for the grassroots coalition Ecologists in Action, said while the capital has lots of trees – 5.7m, according to the city council – they are not always looked after.

“We’ve spent years warning about the rise in unjustified and botched fellings and about the death of urban trees because they’re not properly protected during building works,” he said. “Management at all levels needs to improve and this needs to be taken seriously.” He also warned that failure to act now will only jeopardise the city’s future: “We’re already living the consequences of climate change – and of the loss of biodiversity. The little wildlife we still have left is disappearing, and that in turn gives rise to problems of air quality and health. If we carry on destroying our links to nature, the city will become less and less habitable.”

The regional government and the city council say they are committed to protecting the environment and that all the works comply with the relevant laws. They also say that thousands of replacement trees will be planted.

A spokesperson for the autonomous government, which is led by the outspoken PP politician Isabel Díaz Ayuso, said the metro extension was in the public interest, adding that it was “one of the most ambitious, innovative and transformative transport projects in the region”, and one that would “accelerate the ecological transition”.

A source at city hall, which is overseen by the PP mayor, José Luis Martínez-Almeida, was more forthright. “What we have here is a controversy sparked by leftwing parties who talk about the fellings that PP administrations are carrying out while keeping quiet about the ones they’re carrying out,” they said.

Unesco says it is confident that Spain will find “appropriate solutions” to ensure that the world heritage site around Prado and the Retiro is respected.

Twelve months after the chainsaws began revving up in southwest Madrid, urban trees are firmly on the national political agenda. At the end of last year, Teresa Ribera – who serves as environment minister and a deputy prime minister in Spain’s socialist-led coalition government – wrote to regional environment ministers suggesting drawing up a set of national guidelines to protect urban trees.

She has since met the neighbourhood protest groups and is demanding explanations from the Madrid authorities about why they appear to have decided that chopping down trees was preferable to blocking off traffic during the metro enlargement project.

“At a time of rising temperatures – such as those we’re seeing in Spain – cutting down mature trees that will take a minimum of 20 to 30 years to replace is a disgrace,” she said.

“No one understands why they’d rather cut down a tree than simply cut off a lane of vehicle traffic while the works take place. No one understands that. And no one has explained the reasons behind this stupidity.”