The Contentious-Administrative Court number 9 of Madrid has issued a sentence to the lawsuit filed by the German College of Montecarmelo last summer, which is located a few meters from the location chosen by the City Council for a cleanliness canton and a Selur base. The judge has declared the municipal resolution to transfer the project there. It considers it an industrial installation because it will have a gas station, load points for electric vehicles and waste evaluation activities will be carried out there. To prepare the ruling, the judge has been able to access the construction project of both facilities that is written, although it has not yet been approved or made public. Consider that for a project of these characteristics an environmental impact report should have been prepared and delivered, but it has not been done. The Consistory now has a period of 15 days to appeal the sentence to the Superior Court of Justice of Madrid. He will also be in charge of paying the coasts of the trial. According to the neighbors, the most important thing about this is that finally a judge recognizes what they have been suspecting for 20 months: the canton that the City Council wants to put with their homes is an industrial activity. The delegate of Urbanism, Environment and Mobility, Borja Carabante, has denied that this is so from the beginning. “It will be in a residential area because it is not an industrial activity,” was the version that was already carabante in the Permanent Urban Planning Commission on October 23, 2023. “If it were an industrial activity they would go to an industrial estate.” He wants to build a cleaning canton and a semi base to transplant them in an adjacent area. According to neighbors, doing so on a date so close to summer considerably increases the risk that the specimens will die in the process and believe that it is only a smoke curtain. “They say they are transplanted, but it is an undercover logging,” says a spokesman for the platform of affected by the canton that, together with the Montecarmelo neighborhood association, represents the accusation. They accuse the Municipal Administration to be committing an environmental crime, but also to prevail and embezzle public funds for having ordered to start with those work without legal or administrative coverage. To prepare the complaint they have been based on article 3 of Law 8/2005, of December 26, on the protection and promotion of urban trees of the Community of Madrid. The norm dictates that “drastic, indiscriminate and extemporaneous pruning of any tree protected by this law is prohibited.” It is in the term “extemporaneous” (out of time) where they believe that the key to winning the trial may be. On April 9, the workers of the subcontracted company to carry out the pruning arrived for the first time to the Montecarmeo plot. The socialist councilor Emilia Martínez asked to be taught the authorization and when reading it he found that part of her was expired. The technicians had permission to perform the pruning, but the authorization to transplant copies had defeated in March. That had a reason for being. “It is not the right time because they are already sprouting and the heat is going to take over in a few weeks,” explains María Ángeles Nieto, spokesman for the Madrid environmental platform. “With the heat, its possibilities of survival are reduced,” he clarifies. After this encounter that paralyzed the works during a whole day, the Madrid City Council urgently approved a new authorization that allowed, even entered the month of April, to move forward with the works. According to the spokeswoman of the environmental group, “these last -minute transplants are usually cosmetic operations to appear a lower loss of woodland and calm citizen discomfort.” The neighbors have also indicated in the complaint that this decision, to expand the deadline in which transplants are allowed, is not justified because the definitive project is not yet approved to locate the canton in that plot. The neighbors have based to submit the complaint contemplates exceptions to perform the pruning: “those cases in which the Tree Cup significantly decreases the internal luminosity of the homes, does not keep the distances to electrical or telephone lines provided for in current regulations, hinders or prevents the visibility of traffic lights and, in any case, when there is any danger to road or pedestrian safety”. However, the area where the canton is going to be located is still a park. It is not urbanized, it has no traffic lights and although there are close buildings, they are not enough for the trees to shade any of its windows. Beyond the judicial fight, which is barely taking their first steps, the neighbors continue their struggle in the way in which they are already experts: on the ground. This Wednesday a woman has been climbing to the only cedar that is left in the enclosure for pruning, until the workers have gone and has got the only specimen of that species that remains there staying one more day where it was. Before there were two more, but one of them has already transplanted it and the other have talked it. All this Tuesday. “This is the dialogue that our mayor offers,” writes the Montecarmelo Neighborhood Association in an X post in which attached a truck video that transports a cedar 12 meters high on the trailer. “Paripé transplant”, they are heard singing (news in elaboration) (Tagstotranslate) Community of Madrid
The judge issued a sentence about the Montecarmelo canton: it does not fit where the Madrid City Council wants | News from Madrid
