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CLIMATE CRISIS

How the fate of Madrid’s trees hinges on voters

In Madrid, where summer temperatures are becoming increasingly unbearable due to climate change, the fate of the city's trees has become a hot-button topic ahead of Spain's local and regional elections.

Published: 26 May 2023 17:19 CEST
How the fate of Madrid's trees hinges on voters
No trees have been planted during the renovation of Madrid's Puerta del Sol. Photo: Korng Sok / Unsplash

On the eve of Sunday’s vote, the right-wing Popular Party (PP), which governs both the capital and the Madrid region, has come under attack for its renovation of Puerta del Sol square without planting a single tree.

In a city whose emblem features a wild bear nuzzling a strawberry tree – a statue of which graces the square – critics say a major opportunity was missed to introduce vegetation to the sweeping plaza.

Faced with the backlash, city hall has paused controversial plans to fell more than 1,000 trees next to the Manzanares River to extend a metro line.

“All scientists say ‘you must plant trees’… and add more greenery” to fight climate change, which is causing abnormal heat in Madrid, said Susana de la Higuera, spokeswoman for Pasillo Verde, the association behind the protests that have been key in halting the tree-felling plans.

“But Madrid’s regional government is trying to destroy (the trees) here, and city hall is also involved,” she told AFP.

READ ALSO: How to vote in person in Spain’s municipal elections

Experts say climate change is causing earlier and more intense heatwaves in Madrid and the rest of Spain.
Trees play an important role in countering the “urban heat island effect” that causes cities to be several degrees warmer than nearby rural areas.

The issue is particularly sensitive in Madrid which lost nearly 20 percent of its mature trees over the past four years, mostly due to the historic snowfall which blanketed the Spanish capital in January 2021, municipal figures show.

Javier Padilla, spokesman for the leftist Más Madrid, said city hall had “done nothing to replant the trees” after the storm, and also accused the region’s hardline right-wing Isabel Díaz Ayuso of climate change denial.

READ ALSO: Madrid’s Díaz Ayuso, a right-wing thorn in Spanish PM’s side

She came under fire in November for saying measures to fight global warming were “a big scam” and claiming that the climate has been continuously changing “for as long as Earth has existed”.

Meanwhile, Mayor José Luis Martínez-Almeida hit back at his left-wing critics by accusing them of a mass culling of the city’s trees when they were in city hall between 2015 and 2019.

If re-elected on Sunday, he has pledged to plant 500,000 trees.

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CLIMATE CRISIS

‘Mutant cockroaches’: Why Spain’s rising temperatures make them multiply

Experts in Spain are warning that rising temperatures are causing genetic mutations in cockroach populations that lengthen their breeding seasons and make them more resistant to traditional pesticides.

Published: 16 April 2024 11:04 CEST
'Mutant cockroaches': Why Spain's rising temperatures make them multiply

They’re a part of Spanish summers that everyone dreads. No, not the blistering heat or beaches and beauty spots teeming with tourists, but the cockroaches coming out of hibernation.

If you haven’t lived in a warm climate before, this can come as a bit of a shock. This is especially true if you come across some of the huge, brown cockroaches scurrying across the street or, even worse, in your house.

But now climate and pest control experts warn that climate change could make the problem even worse by causing a genetic mutation and creating what the Spanish press have dubbed ‘mutant cockroaches’ (cucarachas mutantes) that are growing immune to traditional pesticides.

READ ALSO: What to do about insects and other pests in your home in Spain?

The mutation, experts fear, combined with longer breeding seasons and increased birth rates, could pose a public health risk.

Rising temperatures are causing the ‘blond’ or Germanic cockroach (blattella germanica) to genetically mutate.

“Their metabolic cycle is accelerated” by the heat and they are increasingly immune to insecticides, Jorge Galván, director general of the National Association of Environmental Health Companies (Anecpla), told Spanish news outlet 20minutos.

Climate change has changed Spain from “subtropical to a tropical climate,” Galván says.

“The warm seasons are getting longer and the cold ones are getting hotter.” This in turn means that cockroaches appear “a couple of months earlier” and stay out later into the year than they previously would.

This means a longer breeding season, and therefore a larger number of cockroaches.

The effects of these high temperatures combined with longer breeding seasons substantially increases “the probability of a genetic alteration.” Already, pest control experts have seen that cockroaches are becoming immune to traditional pesticides and can ingest chemicals previously used to kill them, something that will, Galván fears, contribute to problems not only of pest control “but of public health.”

READ ALSO: What venomous species are there in Spain?

Carlos Pradera, technical manager of the pest control company Anticimex, explained that “the more we treat them, the more they withstand the pressure.”

For this reason, Pradera says, experts are investigating other “preventive measures” to try and combat the genetic changes, looking at other “other methodologies based on traps and vacuums.”

Cockroaches are becoming increasingly common in homes and bars and restaurants in Spain, experts warn. Anticimex carried out almost 40 percent more pest control incidents in 2023 than the previous year, a record, according to data provided to EL PERIÓDICO.

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