Barcelona City Council will begin an emergency inspection on Monday of more than 800 date palms suspected of presenting problems, of collapsing. The city has around 2,600 specimens of this species. They are more or less spread throughout the neighborhoods. On Thursday, a 20-year-old woman died after half a date palm tree fell on her in the Raval neighborhood, between Plaça Emili Vendrell and Carrer Joaquín Costa.
Municipal technicians are still unable to establish the causes of the fall. From the outset, however, the confluence of three factors that could have triggered it is studied. The Raval palm had a large nest of parrots in the crown and a narrowing of the upper part of the trunk. In addition, drought, lack of water and water stress could also have influenced this sudden break. Suspicious palms, the ones that will be checked from Monday, are the ones that have these factors.
The Council has a very detailed census of the approximately 250,000 trees in the city's streets and squares. And in August 2020, a 41-year-old man died in similar circumstances in Ciutadella park. An inspection of a large part of Barcelona's palm trees was then carried out. Currently, the city has around 12,000 palm trees. Since 2014, no date trees have been planted in the Catalan capital.
These days, many residents of the Raval say that the palm tree had a disturbing inclination, that the nest of parrots in the crown did not stop growing, that it had not been pruned for years... In fact, some of these complaints from neighbors are they registered with the City Council a few months ago.
The deputy mayor and these days accidental mayor, Maria Eugènia Gay; the manager of Parks and Gardens, Francesc Jiménez, and also the municipal director of tree management, after an emergency meeting to deal with the issue, responded yesterday that, precisely, in response to these neighborhood complaints, the 'specimen was visually inspected a couple of times in March, and that technicians did not detect any worrisome anomalies. "The City Council receives about 350 citizen notices of this kind every month, and they are all attended to."
Also, they insisted, this specimen was last pruned in November 2020. Pruning is normally done every four years. And it also underwent the corresponding oscillation test a year later. Since the Ciutadella disaster, date trees have been inspected in this way every two years. Those that do not pass inspection are slaughtered. Doubtful ones must then pass the resistograph test and, according to the results, must undergo the oscillation test every year. This year, 58 date palms have to pass this extra test. Raval's was not one of them.
The accidental mayor added that the Council will commission a specialized external company to study the causes of this fall. "The truth is that we don't know why the Raval palm tree fell - acknowledged the manager of Parks and Gardens. We have annual reviews, and also very strict protocols, but we must be very aware that zero risk does not exist, and that this drought affects the trees. We're learning as we go." Jiménez also indicated that the parrot nest does not seem particularly heavy to him, and that the narrowing of the trunk is within the margins that are considered safe.
In these first measures, the municipal managers prefer to point to the lack of water. In Barcelona, trees are usually watered only during the first four years. And the truth is that this drought isn't going away, it seems to be getting worse. The managers also pointed out that this circumstance had already caused what is called sudden breakage in some palm trees in Elche.
