The reverse trends in pollution in Madrid and Barcelona: a 'sorpasso' and the danger of hardening from Europe

• Environment The EU Justice concludes that Spain did not ensure air quality in Madrid and Barcelona between 2010 and 2018

• City Council Almeida's 'green' turn: from requesting the repeal of Madrid Central to complying with air quality limits for the first time in history

The warning of the Court of Justice of the European Union last December with the contamination was clear towards Spain: "It did not adopt the appropriate measures" and its breaches have been "systematic" and "continuous".

And at the center of that warning are Madrid and Barcelona, ​​which in 2022 bordered the limit allowed by Brussels.

But with a difference:

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Because the Catalan capital has the only measurement station in all of Spain that does not comply with the European directive,

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In addition, the trends in both cities have been reversed in recent years.

Both have seen how the restrictions due to the pandemic decreased their pollution levels, but Barcelona complied with the limits while Madrid had never done so.

Until 2022 arrived and only by 23 hundredths the Plaza Elíptica station in Madrid (39.77), habitual in non-compliance, was below the 40 micrograms per cubic meter of nitrogen dioxide that Europe requires.

In the City Council of the capital they place the low emission zone applied at this point as one of the key measures to reverse the situation.

At the opposite extreme is the Barcelona neighborhood of Eixample, which with its 42 micrograms per cubic meter

, according to data from the Generalitat, did not meet European standards, although it did reduce the figures it had before the pandemic.

This is one of the areas of the city that concentrates the largest number of vehicles and where the municipal government of Ada Colau will act through

with limited motorized vehicles in wide stretches and with priority for pedestrians and bicycles- despite complaints from some neighbors and merchants due to its imminent construction.

In the global calculation, since the Barcelona City Council does not provide the detailed data,

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Both cities are thus below the limit set by the European Commission, but well above the 10 micrograms set by the World Health Organization (WHO).

And that is where the next problem for these cities arises, because the European objective is to set the air pollution limit at 20 micrograms, figures from which both Spanish capitals are far from despite the improvement experienced in recent years.

Following the data from the Madrid City Council and the Generalitat of Catalonia, in 2008, when European measurements began,

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From the Consistory directed by José Luis Martínez-Almeida, they assure that Madrid's compliance with the directive is due to the "success in environmental policies" in which they have tried "not to harm the economy" and "not to be closed only to restrictions » in contrast to the model of Manuela Carmena, reflected in Madrid Central, with whose repeal the popular mayor campaigned in 2019. And as an argument they use that

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In Barcelona, ​​however, they place the weather as one of the causes of its worsening, because last year it recorded record temperatures and little rainfall and wind.

In fact,

due to moderate levels of particles with a diameter of less than 10 microns in the atmospheric environment of Vic and its surroundings and the Zone of Special Protection of the Barcelona conurbation.

According to the Generalitat, the preventive notice is the phase prior to the possibility of an environmental episode, and is activated to reduce pollutant emissions, in this case, the particles that are emitted due to human activities, which are added to the present in the atmosphere for natural reasons.

A situation that Madrid has experienced repeatedly in previous years with the application of the anti-pollution protocol, which in 2022 it did not have to activate.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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• Barcelona

• Europe

• Manuela Carmena

• Hope Aguirre

• Four

• Generalitat of Catalonia

• European Comission

• Ada Colau

• Justice