The parties flee from restricting traffic in the electoral campaign: the low emission zones must wait until May 29
The forcefulness of the Climate Change Law that the Government approved in May 2021 to force cities with more than 50,000 inhabitants to delimit low emission zones (ZBE) has succumbed to political imperatives and to its climax, the electoral campaign for the municipal elections on May 28. Since the deadline for 149 municipalities to create these zones expired in December, there have been no more incorporations than the ten cities that complied with the law. What there has been has been shortcuts and ways of twisting a law that not even the Ministry of Ecological Transition has ensured to enforce.. The result is that, half a year after the legal term expired, almost no city has a low emission zone and, although the parties generally do not disagree on the need to create it, ecologists, municipal technicians and business associations have Of course, it will not arrive until the polls close.. The restrictions and fines do not fit well with the campaign and must come with the municipal governments that arrive after 28M.
“There has been neglect of all local administrations and the Ministry for a purely political issue,” says Cristian Quílez, head of Transport and Mobility at the Ecology and Development Foundation (Ecodes), a non-profit organization that for months has been monitoring the -non-incorporation of the cities obliged by law to create a zone of low emissions.
No new addition
The result could not be more disappointing. The law said that the 149 municipalities that have more than 50,000 inhabitants should have them active by 2023, so the deadline expired on December 31.. However, by that date, only a long dozen municipalities complied, among them Madrid and Barcelona or L'Hospitalet del Llobregat for years. As of January, a new phase was opened in which the municipalities continued to break the law -some, with the pretext that the Ministry itself gave them days before the end of 2022- and the Government looking the other way. Since then, Ecologistas en Acción and Ecodes assure that “no other city” has joined. A recount carried out by this newspaper of the situation in the 29 cities that have more than 200,000 inhabitants shows that none of those that did not already have it in December has joined the club.
Instead of launching information and awareness campaigns for citizens with which environmentalists believe that the “unpopularity” that restricting traffic means is combated, the mayors and the third vice president, Teresa Ribera, were engaged throughout 2022 in demanding an extension the first and in denying it the second. At the same time, the councilors demanded clear regulations on how to set up the LEZs without the risk of any court declaring them illegal -as happened with those of Madrid and Barcelona at the beginning and, just a few months ago, with that of Gijón- and the Ministry assured that the guidelines it disseminated in the spring of last year were sufficient. Until four days before the end of the year and the legal term for the creation of LEZs in 149 cities, the Government approved a royal decree with clear guidelines, which came at the touch of the campaign. However, it added a provision that gave 18 more months to the municipalities that had already implemented low emission zones, so that they “adapted” them to the guidelines established by the decree. This caused the mayors of Valencia or Zaragoza – the third and fourth most populous cities – to hastily approve provisional ordinances, which did not go through either the plenary session or public consultations, with the sole objective of gaining that extra time and not counting as non-compliant cities.
In that case, nothing would have happened either because neither in the Climate Change Law nor in that December decree did the Ministry set a penalty regime or say what would happen to cities that did not restrict traffic. Ribera said then that it would be studied “case by case”. Five months later, sources from his Ministry slip, without giving further details, that there have been “contacts” with the mayors, which clearly have not resulted in more ZBE. Without sanctions, the only way to 'force' city councils to restrict traffic in some areas has to do with the 1,500 million EU Recovery Fund to finance the creation of LEZs. Spain is obliged to spend them for that specific purpose and not doing so would mean having to return them or receive an even greater penalty that would stop the arrival of other tranches of European subsidies.. In December, the Ministry of Transport, Mobility and the Urban Agenda already distributed 1,000 million and last month it awarded another 500, which the city councils publicly celebrated, but in most cases they avoided revealing how they are going to invest them.
For example, Zaragoza (governed by the PP) and Valencia (by Compromís and the PSOE) still do not have active zones. In the Aragonese capital they have simply been limited, but without cameras to control access, much less fines, while in Valencia they are still studying where to put the cameras that will record the infractions. The mayor of Alicante, Luis Barcala (of the PP), proclaims in an electoral tone that “yes, you will be able to go with your car to the center” while keeping quiet about what the local press calls the “best kept secret”, what the zone of casualties will be like city emissions. In the meantime, the city council of Granada (of the PSOE), like many others, has already presented what its ZBE will be like, with a power point where it directly says that the deadline to do so is the end of 2023, one year after what the law says. Málaga, the sixth most populous city, announced to great fanfare that the ZBE will start operating in January 2024, while municipalities such as Vitoria or Las Palmas present areas that were already pedestrianized as traffic restrictions.
For after the elections
“It is a matter that will be resolved with the elections, what most of the city councils have done has been to postpone it due to the unpopularity that it can generate, although we believe that it could have been counteracted if it had been explained [to the citizens] throughout the last year,” says Quílez, from Ecodes. “The Ministry is of a political sign and the elections affect all political signs in all town halls.”
Ecologistas en Acción is also clear that everything has been paralyzed by the elections, as any municipal technician from any town hall assures in private conversations. “Publicly, there is an electoral use of the fear that traffic restrictions can generate but in private you talk with candidates of all colors and they all recognize that they are going to put it into operation,” says the person in charge of ZBE of this NGO, Carmen Duce. Despite this quorum, traffic restrictions are the cause of an electoral battle in towns such as León or Ponferrada. While Vox's opposition is transversal. His candidate in Granada warns that the cameras that will need to be installed “will restrict the freedoms” of citizens.
“We are aware that if it is not explained, it is unpopular and puts the city council at risk if it does so,” admits Quílez. Because delimiting a low emission zone “is not just putting up cameras, it has to be accompanied by public transport, so that a transformation can be seen, which goes beyond 'I forbid you to enter here by car'”. It is also necessary, says Duce, something as basic as having enough municipal staff. This is the case, for example, in Elche (235,000 inhabitants), with three technicians for the area responsible for sustainable development, mobility and traffic. “They have been granted 13 million euros and they don't even know how they are going to manage it without an administrator,” says Duce.
Ecologists, merchant associations or municipal technicians agree that restricting vehicle access in certain areas of the city -and fining those who skip it- “penalizes” for the electoral campaign. Although they are designed to relieve traffic congestion in the center of cities, make them more passable and reduce pollution that affects the health of citizens, without the awareness campaigns that the city councils have given up carrying out, Ecologistas en Acción and Ecodes are clear that the The most visible part is the inconvenience of not being able to go by car to certain places or the fear that something like this will harm commercial and economic activity in general.. Although there are studies that indicate otherwise. “It is increasingly more expensive to own a car and all the studies that have been done, in Madrid, London or Berlin, indicate that more spaces to walk lead to more sales in small stores,” says the head of Ecologistas en Acción.
moves against
If so far this year no more low emission zones have been created, what has happened is that the opposition to them is beginning to organize, in a way that already transcends what happens in each city. For example, the Valladolid Mayor's Office has received 170 challenges to its ordinance proposal from 70 different organizations, from the city and also from outside it.
The Spanish Confederation of Historic Centers (COCAHI) is going to write to the town halls, the Ministry and the EU also to request an extension of several years to implement ZBE. Its president, José Ángel Blanco, believes that it is “premature” to do so in cities that “are not prepared” and where merchants are “greatly harmed”. Facing the electoral campaign, he assures that “they do not want to condition the result at all, but they do want the political parties to become aware of the reality we are suffering from.”
In this 'crusade' are associations that are part of COCAHI, which also take it for granted that everything will change after May 28. “The zone is not yet active because the elections are coming and they do not want to complicate. They are ready and wait for them to pass,” says Agustín Ordejón, manager of the Association of Merchants of the Old Town of Santander. He knows that “whoever wins” will have to set up an LEZ and asks for “sanity” to “let him get to the center” by car, because at the moment there are no “low-cost” car parks as an alternative.
In Santa Cruz de Tenerife, the low emission zone is already delimited and not yet active, something that the president of the Central Zone Association, Ruth Dorta, also assumes will happen after 28-M. “All the [political] groups know that it is the pending task we have,” he explains.. This has been assured and also that it will be designed in conversation with the merchants after the elections. “The first thing on the list as soon as the charges are named,” he says.
In the opposite sense, Ecodes and Ecologistas en Acción also want to influence the 28M with a campaign with the slogan “Space to breathe” that is already touring several Spanish cities to defend the recovery of public space and bet on the improvement of the quality of the air and in which low emission zones are a key factor.
Thus, everything is at stake as to what will happen as of May 29, when new -or the same- municipal corporations come out of the polls, which will be able to act without electoral ties four years from now.. While Ordejón, from the Santander Merchants Association, expects an “aberration”, Ecodes hopes to see facts. “Commitments are no longer valid, we want that from May 29 the new city councils move on to facts and action and implement ambitious and effective ZBEs,” demands Quílez. A seven-year period will be opened so that “in 2030 the municipalities have mobility as close to excellence”.