"We are working on it". The hackneyed phrase is repeated by Catalan town councils with more than 50,000 inhabitants obliged to have a low emissions zone (ZBE) in place since this year. The restrictions on the most polluting vehicles already in force in Barcelona, l'Hospitalet or Sant Cugat are neither present nor expected in cities such as Tarragona, Granollers or Sant Boi, to name three of the 23 cities that should have measures activated at this point in the year. game. In fact, of the five localities that have the measures on paper, three are actually applying them: Barcelona, l'Hospitalet and Sant Cugat.
The delays in complying with what is established in the Climate Change law approved in 2021 are also not accompanied by short-term calendars in most cases. The complexity of the technical works is the reason given by the municipalities consulted by La Vanguardia. The court ruling that brought down the Barcelona ZBE put the rest on alert and has involved much more paperwork than they initially planned. The legal framework that supports the new low-emission zones is now much more complex to avoid appeals from those affected, such as the one that has forced the Catalan capital to draft a new ordinance.
City councils have at their disposal a model legal text promoted by the Spanish Federation of Municipalities and Provinces (FEMP) and which serves as a theoretical and legal framework for its implementation. At first, this document was the one that the City Council and the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona (AMB) had drawn up, but when the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC) overturned the ordinance, they chose to commission a new one from independent professionals. The new wording complies with the provisions of the royal decree published by the Government on December 27, 2022, four days before the deadline in which municipalities theoretically had to activate their low-emission zones of which they did not know the fine print. In practice, what had to be “before 2023” for the ministry, aware that it had not done its homework on time either, was extended to this entire year. The extension has been of little use: with just over two months left until it ends, the majority of city councils have not fulfilled their part.
The problem, according to municipal technicians, is that there is a lot of work beyond the ordinance, which is the document that has always attracted attention. “What is truly important is the technical report that is included in the annex,” highlights Alfons Perona, lawyer and consultant specialized in mobility and road safety. This document is what causes real headaches for the officials who are commissioned to draft the necessary documentation to make the ZBE possible. Most city councils are commissioning consultancies to carry out this report, which must delimit the perimeter, the affected vehicles and indicate how the restrictions will be controlled. "But the documentation they must prepare goes much further, they must justify why a specific area is chosen and not another, the social measures for vulnerable groups that cannot enter, the moratoriums...", lists Carles Labraña, responsible of projects from the Association of Municipalities for Mobility and Urban Transport (AMTU), representative of the majority of the municipalities that are immersed in this process.
All measures taken, in addition, must be accompanied by a legal analysis that gives them legal validity. For Perona, who has advised various city councils in other parts of Spain, “drafting the report that goes as an annex to the ordinance requires at least three to six months of work.” The AMTU has activated its purchasing center for the subsequent step, the acquisition of the cameras and associated technology, to try to shorten deadlines and deploy a common system, one of the main concerns of the mayors of the metropolitan area.
In addition to the technical difficulties, the paralysis associated with the municipal elections has had a lot to do with it. Before May, no mayor wanted to tell his neighbors that he was going to prohibit them from traveling by car. After the summer is when things have reactivated. In some cases, with modifications due to the change of mayor, as is the case of Badalona, one of the few cities that has had a phantom ZBE in force since January 1, without signs on the streets or control cameras. The popular Xavier García Albiol is now willing to play with the margin that the moratoriums give him to delay the start of the fines as much as possible, but without eliminating the ZBE, because that would entail the loss of European funds, which must be executed before the end next year, as agreed with Brussels. In the case of Badalona, it would be more than two million euros.
The Government has made it clear. The Minister for the Ecological Transition, Teresa Ribera, warned that she would take municipalities that do not activate their low emissions zones to court. A few days later, the Ministry of Transport sent a letter to all the municipalities that have received aid warning that they risk having to return the funds received if they do not comply.
Of the 23 cities with more than 50,000 inhabitants in Catalonia, five already have it on paper, although there are actually three: Barcelona, l'Hospitalet and Sant Cugat. The first and largest of them is the one delimited by the rings, which includes practically all of the municipal areas of Barcelona and l'Hospitalet. Cornellà, on the other hand, only has four streets within the ZBE and has yet to develop one for the rest of the city.
If the Catalan capital and the second largest city in Catalonia were the ones that paved the way, Sant Cugat has become the reference for a medium-sized town hall that has done its homework. For its part, Badalona is the example of how, in the eyes of Europe, an operational low-emission zone can be available (and it is, in force since January 1, 2023), although in practice it has a moratorium that keeps it deactivated. for now.
The rest of the municipalities with more than 50,000 inhabitants are reported to the ministry as “in process”, although this range is very wide. Reus and Terrassa, to cite two specific examples, are at a very advanced stage, almost ready to implement them on their streets, while others, like Vilanova, have barely begun to outline what they want to do.
The only town required by law to have a ZBE and that is listed as “pending” is Cerdanyola del Vallès. The paradox arises that the new Vice President of Mobility of the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona (AMB), Carlos Cordón, is the mayor of this city and must be politically in charge of promoting and coordinating these policies in the Barcelona conurbation. Nothing to do with his predecessor, Antoni Poveda, who as mayor of Sant Joan Despí led by example and created a ZBE in his municipality despite not being obliged to do so because it was smaller. Sant Adrià de Besòs did something similar, taking advantage in this case of the creation of the area delimited by the Barcelona ring roads and expanding the radius to almost its entire population. On the other hand, Esplugues, on the other side of the rounds, was in the same situation and chose to limit the ZBE only to the area within the ring of the rounds.
