His name is Pedro Gili, and as a lawyer, he has confronted the City Council and the Community of Madrid to restore the green areas that surrounded the regional Sports Palace, in the center of the capital, with the same extension and continuity that the neighbors enjoyed before the facility burned in 2001. Gili first worked on behalf of a community of residents. When his clients tired of the long litigation, he continued alone. This Monday: the City Council’s proposal validated by the Community does not comply with the concept of a neighborhood green area and lacks the continuity of green spaces necessary to be comparable to that existing before the reconstruction of the Palace. The problem is that the Community of Madrid, owner of the building, has already undertaken the project. That cost him. And the sentence does not mean that the case is resolved in favor of the neighbors. Quite the opposite.
“They will make another modification to the plan, and thus they may be dithering until the justice system agrees with them,” suggests a source with knowledge of the application of urban planning regulations in the capital, who also recalls that the justice system had previously ruled in favor of the appellant, and on previous versions of the City Council’s offer validated by the Community. “They would have to reconfigure the Palace,” he adds about the around 3,854 square meters of green areas lost with the new configuration of the building. “But if we have already made three changes to the plan (without touching the Palace), everything indicates that they will present another, and another, until a judge says yes,” he continues. And he points out a decisive aspect: “Recently the planning changed and what it says about green areas, and that probably gives them the solution.”
It is not an innocent reference. Any new proposal from Martínez-Almeida’s team will arrive under that new umbrella. And there may end up having a place for its modification, which on the last occasion meant expanding the space of green areas and singular sports use, according to its version.
What’s the problem until that time comes? That “the proposal does not correspond to what is required by the norm”, as read in the ruling that declares void the 2024 agreement of the Government Council of the Community by which the Specific Modification of the General Urban Planning Plan of Madrid for the area of the Sports Palace was approved. And it is added that “it is not possible to address the City Council’s allegation that all the areas constitute a continuity of green area surrounding the Sports Palace (…) since what is seen in the proposal is the differentiation of areas, without any connection and without the citizen’s recreation or recreation being continuous and appreciable”,
The TSJM also considers that “it is impossible” for several affected areas to “recover space for pedestrians.” The court adds that “it is contradictory to classify as a green zone (…) the access area to the building (the Palace) that must meet the security and evacuation conditions (…) so it can hardly be used for vegetation conditioning for environmental defense, for pedestrian rest and for road accompaniment.”
And for all this “the proposed areas lack the necessary conditions to be considered a neighborhood green area (…) which leads us to the estimation of the resource.”
Lawyer Gili, specialized in urban planning, does not want any type of prominence. His work has been nourished by a deep knowledge of regulations. And his criteria have been supported by expert reports in court, and outside of it. For example, one of the works with which an attempt was made to restore the lost green areas explains that their absence to accommodate the new form of the Palace entails leaving unresolved “the most basic needs for stay and outdoor recreation of the neighborhood’s population”, “increasing the heat island effect”, or “worsening air quality in factors such as relative humidity, the fixation of CO₂ and particles.”
The victory of this specialist, in any case, is not the first recent defeat of the City Council due to a specific modification of urban planning.
“We are astonished and scandalized by this new blow to the urban planning area of the city council, one more,” says Antonio Giraldo, councilor of the PSOE, in reference to the multiple judicial fiascos of the team of José Luis Martínez-Almeida (PP) with the Cuatro Caminos garages; the Bernabéu car parks; the plan for Ibiza and Sáinz de Baranda Boulevards; the one on Avenida del Mediterráneo 3 or the one in the City of Atlético de Madrid.
“We already warned,” Giraldo emphasizes about the case of the Palacio de los Deportes. “The result is a new judicial annulment. We wonder what legal security is in this city,” he laments. And he concludes: “Everything is a disaster. With this panorama, the delegate (Borja Carabante) should assume political responsibilities. It cannot be that everything is canceled due to defects of form and substance and that he pretends that nothing happens.”
This contrasts in the Madrid City Council. “Now we are going to study the fit of the ruling and look for alternatives, the steps to follow from an urban planning point of view,” says a municipal spokesperson.
This is how the Community of Madrid complements the municipal response. “The Community of Madrid verifies compliance with regional legislation, which the modification of the general plan complies with, another thing is compliance with the requirements that the City Council imposes on itself through ordinances,” says a spokesperson. And he adds: “It is not complied with, not with regional legislation, but with the general plan and the municipal ordinance for the protection of the urban environment, regarding the concept of neighborhood green areas.”
It all started with a blowtorch: it was 2001, and a worker was working on the roof of the old Palace when the flame caught. The fire devoured the building, leaving it in ruins, after causing spectacular smoke that could be seen from almost any point in the city. The new Palace, which cost more than 100 million, was more modern, more ambitious, larger. In the process it ate up green areas. And that change is still pending compensation more than 20 years later, thanks to the persistence of a lawyer.
