Madrid’s government has been accused of undermining the Spanish capital’s ability to cope with record temperatures by cutting down trees and neglecting the kind of urban greenery that helps other global cities stay cool.
Ahead of local elections this month, left-wing politicians are portraying Madrid’s ruling Conservatives as climate change deniers whose policies are endangering the city’s future.
The stakes in the fight against trees are rising as Spain emerges from the hottest April since records began and parts of the country grapple with a drought that prompted the central government this week to provide emergency aid to farmers .
Mónica García, a leftist presidential candidate from the Madrid region, said the People’s Party, which runs the city and the region at large, was “going against common sense” and its own citizens with its perceived disregard for nature .
“The People’s Party is effectively turning Madrid into an anomaly, a bastion of the 20th century – or in some ways the 19th – constantly fighting against the 21st century,” García, leader of the Más Madrid party, told the Financial Times .
Last month’s heatwave, which also hit Portugal, Morocco and Algeria, led the Madrid regional government to announce emergency heating protocols in care homes and allow schools to adjust hours to keep children sheltered from the scorching sun. He also brought forward the opening of public swimming pools to this Saturday to help people cool off.
In other cities, especially in Mediterranean-type climate zones ranging from southern Europe to California to southern Australia, the cooling effects of vegetation have become an essential part of efforts to manage scorching temperatures.
However, according to city government data, the number of mature trees in Madrid has dropped by more than 78,000 to 322,000 since Mayor PP began his term in 2019. About 33,000 trees were lost during a 2021 winter storm. .
Más Madrid says the PP has missed several opportunities to introduce trees or other vegetation during the renovations of heavily concreted public spaces, such as the Puerta del Sol square. Others criticize it for paving sections of land in city parks with gravel.
Rita Maestre, Más Madrid’s candidate for mayor of the city, said: “The PP has a very old-fashioned view that worrying about the environment, worrying about the climate crisis, is a bit of a hippy thing.”
The PP rejects the allegations. He says it is making the fight against climate change compatible with a celebrated economic boom in Madrid, which is attracting growing numbers of foreign investors and tourists.
The party’s control over Madrid, also the seat of central government, is uncomfortable for Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, who is trying to position Spain at the forefront of the fight against climate change.
Polls ahead of May 28 municipal and regional elections suggest that the right and left are in a close race for mayor of Madrid. PP mayor José Luis Martínez-Almeida leads but would need the far-right Vox party to win a majority. A leftist alliance including Más Madrid and Sánchez’s socialists, however, could still beat him.
The PP’s position on climate change is ambiguous. Official party policy is that climate change is real, but Martínez-Almeida accused Más Madrid of “unwarranted alarmism” over last month’s record temperatures.
One of his signature initiatives has been the relaxation of rules for a low-emissions zone for cars created by the previous left-leaning city government, although he has abandoned attempts to do away with it altogether.
Trees in Plaza España in central Madrid © Bloomberg
A spokesman for the mayor blamed the felling of 1,500 trees on railway works overseen by the socialist-led central government and said the previous city administration, led by an ancestor of Más Madrid, had cut down even more trees since 2015-19.
Martínez-Almeida’s government has increased the greenbelt budget and planted more than 210,000 young trees, the spokesman said, though scientists stress it could take years or decades before they reach a size large enough to contribute to the cooling. Madrid is also included in the United Nations Tree Cities of the World program, which recognizes efforts to care for trees.
Isabel Díaz Ayuso, leader of the wider Madrid region PP, said climate change had been happening “since the earth existed” and also described it as a “big scam” propagated by the left.
In the face of protests in February, his administration suspended, but did not cancel, plans to cut down nearly 250 trees, many older than 50 years, to make way for a new metro station in Madrid’s Río park. Ayuso, seen as a future candidate for prime minister, is up for re-election this month.
Tamara Iungman, a researcher at the Barcelona Institute for Global Health, said trees could play an important role in reducing the intensity of urban heat islands, which result from an abundance of heat-retaining materials such as concrete and asphalt.
Trees not only provide shade, but through transpiration they act as natural air conditioners that draw in warm air and expel cooler air.
In a Lancet study of 93 cities, Iungman and others estimated that 40% of deaths attributed to urban heat islands could be avoided by increasing tree cover in cities to 30%, measured at a height of two meters above the ground. .
Only Oslo and Berlin already have such extensive tree cover. Madrid’s figure is 9%, but it is higher than that of other Spanish cities.
Maestre, the mayoral challenger, said the average temperature in Madrid had risen by 1.5C over the past decade. “Obviously there is a problem with the heat in Madrid. There used to be a tough couple of weeks in the summer, but now it starts in April and lasts until September,” he said.
“The city is not prepared for this, nor is it putting in place the necessary measures to prevent it from getting worse.”
Ella Hollowwood data visualization
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