Greta is a tree in what was a ‘zona natural’ in La Sella. In September Greta will die. It is a legal death ordered by the Pedreguer Town Hall. Greta will no longer produce 130 kgs of oxygen a year. Yes 130 kgs. Greta will no longer remove 2600 kgs of carbon dioxide a year. Greta’s contribution to reducing the earth’s temperature will cease. Greta will not be replaced. In fact over the last three years 800 trees have been killed in La Sella. That is 104,000 kgs of oxygen per year removed from the atmosphere and 2,080,000 kgs of carbon dioxide added a year.

Greta is being killed to develop luxury apartments. Nobody can stop the death, nobody cares and nobody will replace the lost trees. Is this right? It is legal. It has the authority of the Pedreguer Town Hall who have licensed this death. In the region of Madrid a permit is required to kill a tree and to get the permit there is cost and a requirement for three more trees to replace each tree. You can see here what is left when the trees have gone.

How does a ‘zona natural’ become a building development site? In the 1980’s Promociones Denia got permission from the Pedreguer Town Hall and the Generalitat to build the La Sella urbanisation. The permission required the building of a religious institution, the Buddhist Centre, and designated a number of green areas as ‘zona natural’ that could not be built on.

By 2006 the land had been acquired by a Madrid building company who got the Pedreguer Town Hall to redesignate this ‘zona natural’ for the building of public service developments such as a school, hospital or church. In 2016 this building company further got the Pedreguer Town Hall to redesignate again so that luxury apartments could be built. This company is now legally killing the trees in this previous ‘zona natural’, legally pounding out noise at levels over 90 dbls from 8am to 6pm five days a week and legally putting granite dust in to the air that can damage the lungs of children. Is this right?

I live in an apartment close to this development. When I bought my apartment I was told, verbally sadly, that it was against the law to build on ‘zona natural’. I bought from Promociones Denia who subsequently obtained permits from the Pedreguer Council to convert ‘zona natural’ in to building land. It will be interesting to understand the financial flows involved in this change.
I have put this together by talking to local Spanish people to understand how things ‘work in Spain.’ I will update my understanding as I get more information. As this development has a permit allowing the builder to destroy this environment over the next four years I need to make a decision. Do I do something about it or accept this is the way things work in Spain and go somewhere else for four years?
I am told if we got a million signatures, made pleas to the government or sought journalist investigation in to how the changes of land designation occurred then Greta will still die in September.
Is this right?
Categories: Boundaries