In mid-August, Madrid City Council granted permission to build a controversial crematorium in Usera and put it into operation over the next eight years. It will be located at number 36 Rosales Avenue, in the facilities of the funeral home owned by the Parcesa company on the M-40.
According to the documentation to which this newspaper had access, the Activities Agency authorises the said company to carry out work to install a crematorium oven after a report from municipal technicians submitted on 16 August, “in favour of granting the authorisation requested by”. the interested party. The permit includes “interior development work on the ground floor, as well as “a new distribution of partitions and interior enclosures with the erection of new brickworks and their coverings, including previous demolitions, benches and installations”. “The work to restore the roof intended for the installation of the filtration enclosure is also authorised, including the perimeter execution of the enclosure using acoustic screens.”
The authorised installation consists of an incinerator oven equipped with four burners, as well as a 36-metre high chimney. The entire system will be powered by two boilers and a generator with a total power of more than 1,400 kWt. The City Council also specifies in the granting of the licence that the issuance of an environmental assessment report is not necessary and leaves the final authorisation for the cremation of corpses in the hands of the Community of Madrid, specifying that it is the Community of Madrid which must “establish the conditions of the authorisation aimed at guaranteeing the environmental integration of the activity”.
The now authorized crematorium has been rejected three times by the Madrid City Council. Álvarez del Manzano disavowed it in 2002 and in 2016 the municipal executive, then led by Manuela Carmena, also rejected this possibility. The last municipal veto was in 2021, with Almeida already in Cibeles. That year, his delegate for urban planning, Mariano Fuentes (Ciudadanos), announced in September that he was rejecting the authorization for non-compliance with the environmental regulations of the City Council, which require a minimum distance of 250 meters “from the source of emission to homes or places of habitual residence.” of people, he said then.
Three years after these words, the same department, now headed by Borja Carabante, grants the license despite the fact that the funeral home that will house the crematorium is located approximately 200 meters from the homes of the San Fermín neighborhood (Usera), the Los Rosales neighborhood (Villaverde) and also a similar distance from the El Espinillo Institute.
The text of the authorization consulted by Somos Madrid states that “this license is granted out of respect and execution of the final judgment issued on July 12, 2021” by the Supreme Court, before which Parcesa-Parques de la Paz SA appealed. of cassation before the resolution of March 30, 2016 of the Director of the Activities Agency, which had initially denied the approval. The permit contradicts the statements of the penultimate delegate for urban planning of Madrid, assuring that there would be no permit for this oven, after the date of the judgment cited in this recent authorization. They also clash with the vote of the PP in the plenary session of Cibeles in September 2021, when it approved, together with the rest of the groups, a socialist proposal to prevent the opening of the crematorium.
The explanations of the City Council and the Community of Madrid are limited to indicating that the decision “forced” the granting of permits and that the Carabante area spent three years looking into whether it could avoid this possibility.
Neighbours and opposition parties, against
The granting of the licence was made public by the PSOE in Madrid, which has harshly criticised the city council for giving the green light to a facility that is opposed by neighbourhood associations in the area. “Mr Almeida owes the people of Madrid many explanations for his radical change of position regarding the construction of a crematorium in Usera,” said socialist councillor Ignacio Benito, in statements to this newspaper.
“Only 3 years ago, after two other attempts by the applicant company, the Popular Party voted against this oven, unanimously with the rest of the Cibeles groups, and celebrated that all the groups supported the PSOE initiative and a Supreme Court ruling rejecting its construction was respected,” recalls the councilor.
“It is insane that municipal regulations are being violated, in a fourth attempt, ignoring a court ruling and allowing the cremation of corpses less than 250 m from inhabited areas, with the harmful risk that this implies for the neighborhood,” they add. of the PSOE. “San Fermín is a neighborhood particularly abandoned by the Madrid City Council, so this crematorium must now also suffer.”
Finally, Benito states that “the absolute majority allows Almeida to do many things, but not to govern against the neighbors, against the judicial decisions and against common sense. What the residents of Usera, Villaverde or Vallecas need are investments and public facilities, not facilities that put their health at risk.”
The neighborhood movement also opposed the granting of the license. The Association of Independent Neighborhoods of Butarque criticizes a decision that “worsens the southern neighborhoods.” “Didn’t we have a crematorium? Well, now one with a 24-hour permit with a thousand cremations a year,” they add.
“No matter what they say, this continues to be an activity declared potentially harmful and unhealthy, not by the residents of a neighborhood, but by the Community of Madrid,” added the San Fermín Neighborhood Association in a harsh statement against the decision of the Almeida Government. “We will not remain silent, even if the administrative forms wish it,” they warn before alerting about the mobilizations against this installation.
More Madrid also harshly criticized the granting of the license. His councilor Félix Rey wrote in X, following the decision: “We knew that Almeida and his team do not think about their southern neighbors. Today, taking advantage of the month of August, they have just given permission to open a crematorium in the San Fermín neighborhood. There are already several in the same neighborhood. “All this for money.”
From Rita Maestre’s party, they point out that the license was granted last Friday, “late in the morning, in mid-August” and that “the air quality ordinance itself prohibits it and the mayor took advantage of the holidays to “break the rules and authorize an activity that will only harm thousands of residents, which will put their health at risk.
The statements by Más Madrid are in line with those of the rest of the organisations that oppose the oven and predict a busy end to the summer for the City Council in this area: “We are not going to sit idly by, we are as always with the neighbours and we are going to prevent this fourth attempt to install a crematorium,” they warn.
