Farewell to Parc Joan Miró. At least for a long time. Despite neighborhood protests, which had been warning of the issue, the Barcelona City Council has cut down a hundred trees to clear the area and serve as a playground for the expansion works of the Ferrocarrils de la Generalitat de Catalunya (FGC).
The project, which seeks to connect the FGC Plaça Espanya and Gràcia stations, has started in Plaça Espanya and runs through its subway, but the need to have a logistics area for the works to house machinery and excavated earth has led in return to the felling of 75 pine trees and 19 palm trees to clear 5,292 square meters of Parc Joan Miró, which is now a wasteland .
According to the Generalitat, the felling is “less than initially calculated” (the first estimate spoke of 178 trees, but was later reduced to 118 specimens, precisely because of neighborhood protests) and the uprooted trees will be transplanted in other areas of the park, to return to their usual place once the two and a half years of work are over.
Despite this , the neighbors of the area have been organizing protests for months against the felling, arguing that the park is one of the few green lungs in the area of l’Eixample esquerra. In turn, the neighborhood platform Salvem el Parc Joan Miró has been active in organizing protests to stop the logging and demand alternatives to preserve the green space. For its part, the Sindicatura de Greuges de Barcelona has also intervened, requesting that the trees not be replaced once the works are finished and highlighting the insufficiency of green spaces in the city.
For its part, Territori explained that the alternative of occupying a pavilion of the Fira de Barcelona in Plaça Espanya – as claimed by the neighborhood platform Salvem el Parc Joan Miró – was unfeasible and involved an overrun of 16 million. To this,the neighborhood platforms plan to organize new protests soon and have filled the fences of the new open space with protest posters.
Meanwhile, the works are progressing, and the park is now a wasteland from which half of the trees have disappeared.