Protesters come out in force in the Spanish capital in an attempt to save the trees and playground from the Metro expansion plan

MORE THAN A THOUSAND people came out to protest this Saturday in the Spanish capital against a Metro expansion plan that will mean the destruction of nearly 300 trees and a popular children’s playground in the Madrid Río park.

The regional government, led by Popular Party politician Isabel Díaz Ayuso, had originally planned to add the new station on Line 11 of the Metro system under nearby Paseo de Yeserías street.

But a change that was not made public will be the construction of the stop in the Madrid Río park itself, which will force the removal of 279 trees and a children’s playground known as the ‘pirate ship’ thanks to its galleon design.

The expansion works of Line 11, which will run from the southwest to the northeast of the city, will require the removal of more than a thousand trees in total.

“The environmental impact statement did not include the demolition of the Comillas park or this station in the middle of the park,” the residents complained at the demonstration on Saturday, in comments collected by the online newspaper The newspaper.

The protesters angrily beat the red and white fence that has already been placed in the area and that has been painted with slogans such as ‘No to felling trees’.

‘Let’s be clear, the work to be done is not that [made public] in 2019,’ said a spokesman for the environmental group Ecologistas en Acción.

Other protesters lamented the lack of shade that the removal of the trees will cause, while even more pointed out that walking out of a subway station into a park late at night will make commuters feel at risk.

Opposition parties such as the leftist Más Madrid and the Socialist Party were represented at the demonstration.

The Madrid City Council, run by the mayor of the PP, José Luis Martínez-Almeida, has also been the focus of the anger of the neighbors for the damage to the vegetation, with more than 78,616 trees felled during his tenure.

According to figures cited in the diary the City Council itself, the city has lost a fifth of its adult trees in just four years.

Council officials told the newspaper that this drastic reduction was partly due to damage from the Philomena blizzard in January 2021.

Almeida has also been criticized for a remodeling of the central Puerta del Sol square, which according to critics leaves no vegetation or shade for the hot summer months, and the replacement of cobbled streets with asphalt, which will also cause temperatures to rise in the streets. .

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