The unexpected luminous moss that can save a neighborhood in Vigo

A shy luminous moss stands up to the viral mayor of Christmas lights.

in front of Abel Caballero.

A species classified on the Spanish red list as rare and vulnerable, hardly located in the Iberian Peninsula, which loses out when it competes for habitat against other mosses and plants.

the

desperately seeks its space and takes refuge in the mouth of caves, burrows, drainage galleries, cracks and humid and dark cavities with little light for its competitors, but which it knows how to take advantage of and multiply until it gives the sensation that it shines by itself as a firefly

There is usually talk of more than a dozen and less than a fortnight of strongholds, almost all in the north, where this species of moss survives in Spain, a fact that is now being reviewed by a team made up of researchers from the CSIC and the universities of Oviedo, León and Navarra.

But a fortuitous discovery, a few days ago, has added an unknown enclave to the map of these scientists: a water mine of more than 200 years located right on the path of a controversial high-capacity highway that threatens to build the socialist Government of Vigo .

The four-lane road, for the moment a ghost that appears in the future General Plan for Municipal Planning, will cross through the middle of four rural and hyperpopulated neighborhoods, through which the largest city in Galicia extends its tentacles and climbs between hills, greenery and rivers with waterfalls, otters and old mills.

Those affected denounce that the work will take away nature, community life and a trail of houses.

'Schistostega pennata' in a bicentennial mine that will disappear if the current corridor plan PO-010 that connects with the Free Zone is carried out.ÓSCAR CORRAL

The number still dances and the City Council reduces it considerably, but according to the calculations of the neighbors, the expropriated can be "about 40 homes" -three still unused and with a building license granted by the City Council itself last year- more A whole constellation of properties in hitherto quiet places that will have to learn to live on the edge of noise, fumes and the movement of trucks.

While the opposition (PP, En Marea, BNG) defends that the road is "unnecessary", "unjustified", "no one has asked for it" and "sacrifices" neighborhoods, the municipal government affirms that it is strategic and essential to alleviate the intense traffic from the city.

In the general plan being processed, it is said that this new round, PO-010, "will guarantee accessibility to the Technological Park, the Álvaro Cunqueiro Hospital, the university or the industrial expansions of the Balaídos estate in the Zona Franca".

The latter is what most rankles those affected and all the environmental groups (Greenpeace, Adega, Ecoloxistas en Acción, Amigos da Terra) who support their defense of the green heart of rural Vigo: that the road, without intermediate accesses in the neighbourhoods, it could be a link with no other purpose than to serve Stellantis in the Zona Franca, formerly Citroën, and save five minutes for the heavy vehicles that transport parts from their auxiliary companies.

In fact, the route of the PO-010 will begin on the A-55, Vigo's southern exit (towards Portugal, Madrid and the most industrious municipalities of Pontevedra), and will effectively end at the gates of Stellantis.

But in the middle it will open a long wound that will cut through large neighborhoods such as Beade and Bembrive, places with a motley landscape (houses and vegetation), with labyrinthine paths and many residents who have put themselves on a war footing and announce that they will reach "the Supreme Court" by defend your environment.

At the moment, they have already broken a record of citizen discomfort with their 3,000 allegations to the plan;

they inform other people from Vigo about the fundamental “irregularities”, “botches” and “absence of documents” that they have detected in the PGOM;

they organize demonstrations, caceroladas, pilgrimages to Santiago and scientific routes to publicize the hidden riches of their area;

and now they look with hope at the unexpected find in a secular water mine that they show to the press when they ask, but whose location they keep secret (and under lock and key) for fear that the delicate moss will be destroyed.

The mine itself, of great heritage value, will disappear under the asphalt if they fail to prevent it.

The Barxa channel as it passes through Beade (Vigo) in an image from the blog 'Ollar pola fiestra'.ollarpolafiestra.blogspot

The family that owns this spring, which has been watering its orchards since at least the 19th century, had no idea that the golden-green moss that covers the stone walls was something so special.

The beautiful emerald treasure capable of capturing natural light was found by chance by a couple of reporters from the

newspaper who were preparing information on the mine and the road.

And immediately the matter interested the Xunta de Galicia and the team led by Jairo Robla, CSIC predoctoral contracted at the Doñana Biological Station.

Together with Víctor González (University of Oviedo), Sara Santamarina (University of León) and Mikel Artazkoz (University of Navarra), the biologist is finalizing a study on the situation of S

in Spain and Portugal, the end of its distribution in the planet.

Robla explains that the key is in the protonema, a group of filaments produced when the spore germinates, with swollen cells, vacuoles, which “store substances such as water” and “when light enters, they act like lenses”.

Thanks to this feature, or, to put it another way, because he wears

magnifying

it can photosynthesize in very low light, and when light hits the chloroplasts it is reflected so that the moss glows green to gold.

It is also known as goblin gold or dragon gold.

“In Hokkaido, Japan, there is a cave covered with S

which is a natural monument”, explains this moss scholar in his spare time, because his work at the CSIC focuses on natural restoration after the Aznalcóllar disaster.

"Here, however, it has no legal protection" despite being listed as vulnerable, "because in terms of moss in Spain there are very few studied and protected species."

He began to investigate it for pure "romanticism" after discovering it in a crack near his house in Asturias.

And he knows that in these years some of the towns that were traditionally counted in Spain have disappeared.

One of the most fascinating unknowns is how this moss is able to travel from one cave to another very far away, if it fails to thrive outside the cavities.

"In Russia this was studied... it is still a hypothesis, but they believe that it travels on the legs of bats,

Mine entrance where luminous moss thrives.ÓSCAR CORRAL

It is not the first time that the urban decisions of the government of Abel Caballero, who has been mayor since 2007 and directs the destiny of the city with an overwhelming absolute majority, has revolted neighborhood groups, but never has the protest been so large, persistent and loud.

The hard core is Avibe (Association of People Affected by the Road in Beade), led by the tenacious science teacher Ana Pascual.

The neighbors have hired architects and lawyers to arm themselves with arguments against a project that, in their opinion, was planned stealthily and "through the back door", to the point that, as they say, those affected did not find out until the end from last year.

And they claim that the ecosystem formed by the Barxa and Eifonso rivers, a landscape ignored by the majority of Vigo residents, which conserves fountains, petroglyphs,

Pascual explains that, as "incredible" as it may seem, the road was planned on a map "from 2017" by a company from A Coruña and "without environmental and technical studies to justify and protect it."

Those affected have indeed commissioned several counter-reports with their own means.

Despite the fact that the road is autonomous, the Xunta has already warned that it will not finance it.

According to the future PGOM, "obscurantist" and full of "shadows" in the opinion of the Federation of Neighborhood Associations Eduardo Chao, the land reserve for this infrastructure will be 18 years, and the houses will be subject to the possibility of being expropriated, although the work is never carried out.

The land will be reclassified as rustic, "80% devalued", and the neighbors, chained to them and their houses, impossible to sell.

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