The shade of the trees dwindles in Seville despite the extreme heat

The controversy over the felling of the centennial ficus of Seville, interrupted by a judge at the last moment before being auctioned off, has aggravated the problem that the Andalusian capital has been dragging for years with its trees.

With temperatures skyrocketing - up to 44 degrees - and dozens of deaths due to heat waves concatenated in July, shade in the city is scarce: due to the works in streets and squares, more and more old copies and large glasses are replaced by small trees, many of which dry up as they do not resist the rise of mercury.

The strategy of the City Council (PSOE) against urban ecology and scientific advice to prevent deaths from heat stress has stirred up arborists and environmentalists, but also architects and neighbors who are fighting to survive increasingly suffocating summers.

What has happened so that logging proliferates in the fourth most populous Spanish city despite the benefits that trees bring to public health?

Urban development, which systematically ignores trees as if they were furniture and not living beings, explains many keys to Seville and its tense relationship with nature that protects its neighbors.

“There is no sensitivity and most people think that one living being can be replaced by another.

The trees are old or very young.

When they uprooted more than 300 melias when they were 40 years old, they [the City Council] said they were planting 400, but it is a fallacy because they need tutoring, continuous irrigation and many leave," criticizes biologist Tomás García, who met with the mayor last week. , Antonio Muñoz, and assured that the socialist alderman will save the ficus from dying after 110 years of history.

In the last decade there have been arboricides in streets, squares and private farms.

Some indiscriminate, others motivated because the workers had undermined the roots, others due to the inaction of the Urban Planning technicians... the last one plans to uproot 389 trees in the Tablada neighborhood, many half a century old, due to a redevelopment planned by the Ministry of Defense, pending for the City Council to approve it.

Most of the time, after the felling, only the trace of social networks remains, where the embarrassed neighbors upload their videos while they remove the shade from their streets.

Since last April, Seville has chaired the network of cities for the climate.

“The fellings go badly with the increase in temperatures, I am against the loss of shade and determined to recover it, although normally the fellings are due to works conditions,” says Fernando Mora-Figueroa, municipal general director of the environment.

Seville has 209,608 trees, a figure lower than the 251,605 cataloged by Valencia, although higher than those of Zaragoza, with 170,580, two cities of similar size.

However, the Aragonese capital has planted 50,000 trees last year and plans to reach 700,000 trees to contain the high temperatures of the coming summers.

Seville has planted 27,575 trees in the last three years and the City Council ensures that only one of every 13 planted dies.

The scientific consensus says that a tree only has a tangible benefit when it reaches 12 meters in height and eight meters in crown projection, after 25 or 30 years of life.

“Journalists do a disservice on the danger of trees.

It is an exceptional event and its risk is valued, there is a one in 10 million chance of dying from a fall from a branch, while the environmental benefits are not disseminated”, criticizes the arborist Luis Alberto Díaz-Galiano.

The increase in trees improves air quality and CO₂ emissions, retains more water when it rains and mitigates soil erosion, creates natural shade, reduces energy consumption, improves the mental and physical health of citizens, increases humidity and generates freshness in the air, multiplies biodiversity, in addition to reporting local economic benefits,

Covered pit that strangles the tree, at number 31 of Avenida 28 de Febrero in Seville. Paco Puentes

One key that explains arboricides is the red carpet walked by private developers – often financed by investment funds – who avoid filing reports to destroy trees on farms.

The technicians of the Planning Department do not require them either, despite the fact that they fail to comply with the general plan.

Everyone systematically ignores Parks and Gardens.

"There is an absolute lack of coordination between Parks and Gardens and Urban Planning, which would always have to ask us for reports and only does so sometimes," admits Mora-Figueroa, who claims to have learned of the reform of the surroundings of the Lope de Vega Theater in the press. adjacent to the largest park in the city, that of María Luisa.

“I do not agree with Palmera 38 [a controversial work in progress and denounced in the courts] and I spoke with Urbanismo, but verbally he told me that it was legal to raze the trees.

Indalecio de la Lastra, Urban Planning engineer and technician, points out how this Delegation despises trees as mere expendable objects: “The technicians do not report the trees and do not request reports from the owners of the plots for Parks and Gardens because it puts obstacles to the maelstrom of producing works as it is to trigger the tourist offer.

Contrary to Barcelona, ​​which opts for the moratorium.

Palmera 38 works three shifts to establish the policy of faits accomplis and that the judge does not ask for the collapse, ”he criticizes.

Given the construction fury unleashed in the last five years, Seville already has a whopping 210 hotels, almost all concentrated in the historic center, from where residents flee due to tourist pressure.

The general urban plan of the Andalusian capital requires planting five trees for each uprooted specimen, but it is a dead letter for the local government, despite being the current norm.

"They skip the PGOU as if it didn't exist and have put it in a drawer, the city lacks a long-term vision and only works day to day," censures Emilio Carrillo, former deputy mayor of Seville with the PSOE between 2004 and 2008. The president of the College of Architects, Cristina Murillo, adds about the low quality of recent urban planning: "The models for bidding for works have to go with blueprints, now the cheapest always gets it, that is how this city has that spatial degradation and not will never change."

Another fundamental key is the lack of transparency: the application that details the trees in Seville, Arbomap, only reports the characteristics of each tree and does not offer an updated census or by neighborhood, despite the fact that environmentalists have been demanding access to the data since 2015 .

“This is a war of the associations against the City Council and making the information open would be a tool to slap us, although if the mayor forces me to make it open, I would.

But it is a throwing weapon,” protests Mora-Figueroa.

Antonio Manrique, from the Save your trees association, refutes: “There is no inventory and the application is not up to date.

In other cities they can see all the data and in Seville, no.

It's not serious".

Cities like New York, with 692,923 trees, have gone a step further and thanks to their technicians and citizen collaboration, their exemplary application Tree Map NYC reports the benefits of each tree on each street: reduced carbon dioxide, the economic value of its annual benefits, intercepted stormwater, and annual energy conserved.

Sparks have flown between environmentalists and the Sevillian City Council over the logging.

Like when an open microphone betrayed Mayor Juan Espadas ―today the leader of the Andalusian PSOE― two years ago, who said in a low voice while a local environmental activist intervened in the municipal plenary: “This is a public danger (…) They should have been killed. ”, caught the video, which went viral.

The activists admit that they have often missed the mark with their denunciation strategy, that they have sinned innocently and that they have wasted time with press releases, questions to the councilor in municipal plenary sessions and minority protests.

Now they are clear that only justice serves as the necessary ally to stop illegal logging and construction.

“The ficus is a before and after in Seville.

Activism needs an alarm protocol and constant legal advice”, stresses Joaquín Guerra, a member of Ni un Árbol menos.

Logs of felled eucalyptus trees in the María Luisa Park in Seville.

Among the works that involved arboricides, the environment of the Torre del Oro stands out, where the City Council installed a square without shade or trees that has taken five years to correct with awnings planned now for 2023. There Rafael Pradas, an employee, suffers the ravages of the heat for 14 years from the Water Kiosk, next to a six-lane avenue: “We water the vines to someday have shade because here there is a heat that is not normal.

Before you saw a blanket of trees towards the Torre del Oro and now you don't see any.

The Town Hall pergola does not have a roof, they do not allow us to install sprinklers or awnings, and despite the heat waves this has changed a lot, before there was more vegetation”.

The Amja association, which represents the Andalusian gardening companies, appealed the felling of the centennial ficus to the guard court because apart from the municipal technicians, they had neglected to consult specialized scientists: "The experts in arboriculture were not consulted and this discipline has evolved a lot.

The action criminalizes the urban tree because branches fall, shed leaves or dirty the sidewalks, despite the fact that its ecosystem and health benefits are economically evaluable,” says Aurora Baena, manager of the association.

On the day of the felling, a paradoxical image was produced at the foot of the ficus: the twenty or so local police officers standing in formation to protect the felling and keep the protesters away were at midday placed in the shade of its branches to withstand the suffocating heat.