Residents of the "San Pascual Desert" demand trees on their sidewalks: there are only 4.6 per 100 inhabitants.

The mercury soars in Madrid during the summer, and a shady spot is a good way to cool off. It's what they don't have at the back of the mosque on the M-30 and the funeral home of the same name, in the so-called "San Pascual Desert." Therefore, in this Ciudad Lineal neighborhood, they are calling on the City Council to implement a tree plan to plant street trees on at least 13 streets around the market that don't have a single green area. "It's a real open-air oven," and in summer, the asphalt "can reach 50-60 degrees," residents say.

This neighborhood demand has been around for at least five years, but with the arrival of high temperatures, it has become particularly resonant again. "This is terrible. There are streets where there is no shade at any time of day," laments Nuria Serrano, president of the San Pascual Neighborhood Association. At midday and during the early afternoon, residents take shelter in their homes because "walking is impossible," even for pets, which "can't go outside for most of the day due to the risk of burning their paws." At night, the situation doesn't improve either: "It doesn't cool down here; we can have temperatures as high as 30 degrees," caused by the heat accumulated on the asphalt. "This wouldn't happen if there were trees to provide shade and prevent this rise in temperature," insists Serrano.

On June 10, the district plenary session unanimously approved urging the Municipal Board or the relevant department to plant street trees in this neighborhood, on the streets bordered by Martínez Villergas, Virgen del Val, Avenida de Badajoz, and Salvador de Madariaga. These are only four of at least 13 streets without a single sliver of vegetation: Antonio Calvo, Persuasión, Antonio Cantajelo, Demetrio López, María Nistal, Derechos Humanos, Valentín Aguirre, Luis Cernuda, Fernando Pessoa, César González Ruano, Costanilla del Calero, Francisco Giner de los Ríos, and Electrónica. Others, they claim, "highly trafficked by pedestrians, have only a few isolated trees, almost always from the neighborhood associations themselves."

The approval of this proposal should be, in their opinion, the first step in the municipal plan to increase the neighborhood's green areas in order to combat pollution and adapt to rising temperatures. Furthermore, they maintain that the aforementioned roads are "quite wide," so "there is enough space." They cite districts such asCentro , Chamberí , and Salamanca as examples, where there are very narrow streets that still have trees.

Transferred

According to data from Madrid City Council , the administrative district of San Pascual has 4.6 trees per 100 inhabitants; while the city average is double that: 8.05 trees per 100 inhabitants. A total of nine kilometers of streets are treeless . In what they call "the desert," which corresponds to the old neighborhoods of La Bomba and San Pascual, it is "even worse." This is, above all, the area bordering the M-30 , "unlike other areas like Carlota O'Neill, whose sidewalks are equipped with numerous tree pits." Therefore, for yet another summer, they are resuming their call for a greener, fresher, and healthier environment.