Valencia, the most unnoticed European green capital

Two years ago and at the first attempt, Valencia achieved the title of European green capital of 2024, an award granted by the European Commission to cities committed to urban ecology and sustainability with the dual purpose of continuing in that direction and being a reference for the rest. It was the second Spanish city to win such recognition – after Vitoria-Gasteiz achieved it in 2012 – and the first in the Mediterranean. The previous municipal government, of Compromís and PSPV, put together a winning candidacy. But the 28M elections in 2023 brought a change of government in the City Council, which the PP took over as a minority and which Vox, a climate change denialist party, joined at the end of October. Now, after four months of green capital status, the event goes unnoticed and its management receives criticism from the opposition, which denounces delays in the planning and organization of the events and their limited echo and social mobilization.

When it won the award, the capital had just eight years of policies aimed at calming traffic, promoting the use of non-polluting means of transport such as bicycles, gaining pedestrian zones and renaturalizing urban spaces (the capital has 7.5 square meters of green zone per resident). But, under his government, the PP handed over the portfolios green from the City Council (Parks and Gardens, Agriculture or the management of the Albufera, its most valuable wetland) to the ultra party, and although the development of the project depends directly on the Mayor’s Office, the wheels seem to not be greased until the second semester. The director of the Green Capital Office was appointed at the end of September 2023 but the technical support contract was not awarded until January, just a few days before the opening ceremony, in which Valencia took over from its predecessor, the Estonian city of Tallinn.

Councilor Paula Llobet (PP), responsible for managing the capital, has responded to the opposition that there is more than 4 million in budget (between the City Council, the Generalitat and the Provincial Council of Valencia) and “200 meetings and interviews of more than 400 planned), many of them with international impact; and we have organized and participated in events, 28 of them of great impact”, but it is also true that the competition for the design, organization and production of events in the capital has not been put out to tender until April. In its oversight work, the opposition also finds it shocking that the opening and closing of the same congress on wetlands appear separately in the count of activities, or that the Valencia 15K race is included, or the closing of a national congress of pharmacists. .

“We are wasting a great opportunity. If Valencia were the headquarters of the Copa del América, they would have made sure that everyone knew about it,” criticizes Compromís councilor Sergi Campillo, one of those in charge, when he was vice mayor and councilor for Urban Ecology, of putting together the green candidacy. . The mayor considers that Catalá uses the prize, above all, as a tourist attraction. In fact, one of the most visible spaces that the City Council dedicates to the capital is hosted on the website of Visit Valenciathe municipal tourism foundation.

Antonio García Celda, the director of the Green Capital Office, explains that the current local government inherited the challenge after elections and a change of Executive. “It is undeniable that the country was paralyzed for months and when we arrived there was a lot to do and, unfortunately, the capital status was not for a year or two, but for 2024,” he points out, while emphasizing that it has been preferred to work well work fast “All the cities that have been cities before have not begun their capital status neither in January, nor in February, nor in March, but in the second half of the year. “Valencia will be able to become, like the rest of the cities, a good capital,” he adds. And he directs the focus towards the Government of Spain because he has not declared the event of exceptional public interest to encourage participation with tax incentives.

A key date for the capital city will be in June, with the planned celebration of a summit of cities with an EU climate mission. Furthermore, “all the government’s actions have a part dedicated to the green capital,” he argues, although he puts himself in the same bag from the work for the UN to declare the Albufera wetland a Biosphere Reserve to the installation of points of electric recharging, the holding of an electric boat fair, or the future Desembocadura park, still in the project.

“They are hostages to Vox’s denialist policies,” says socialist councilor Elisa Valía in reference to the PP. And in the midst of the green capital, a councilor from the municipal government, from Vox, denied at an international conference on wetlands that the problem of the Albufera was climate change. “Climate alarmism I would say or climate religion if you prefer. This speech has served nothing more than ideological signaling and the waste of public money. A speech from which a good number of scientists have already emerged, some of them Nobel Prize winners,” said the ultra councilor José Gosálbez, before a surprised audience.

The European Commission itself responded, to a question from the socialist MEP Inmaculada Rodríguez-Piñero, who echoed the mayor’s controversial statements, that there is a scientific consensus on climate change, that the earth’s temperature is increasing and that “the EU climate action is based on science (…)”. It was not the only episode: the Vox spokesperson in Valencia and Councilor for Parks and Gardens, Juan Manuel Badenas, stated at the opening ceremony of the Green Capital that he came “out of institutional respect”, but ideologically he did not believe in it.

Added to the rudeness are the recent controversies in the city due to the review of projects that the previous Executive left planned: for example, that in the only pedestrian superblock that Valencia has, the local government allows parking now because “it is a matter of sense common” given the lack of parking, the mayor said. Or that in some urban plans the reduction of traffic lanes has been reversed.

“Being the capital is an opportunity to advance the green construction of the city. It is more than just events and conferences, that too. It is, above all, continuing to build green awareness among citizens and for that we have to mobilize them,” considers Andrés Fernández, one of the consultants who participated in the development of the Vitoria 2012 strategy. Fernández, director of the Ciudadano Kane agency in the Basque capital, highlights from that year’s agenda the creation of a volunteer program, to work on “citizen pride around greenery”, or the pact of sensitive companies with sustainability.

The Federation of Neighborhood Associations of Valencia has received information about the capital’s activities but “we have stayed there for the moment,” explains its president, María José Broseta. But their citizen week will be dedicated this year, on their own initiative, to green policies. García Celda acknowledges that there is no volunteer plan but she wants to promote it, and of the s
ponsorships she announces that the first one has already arrived. In addition, there is an agreement signed with the regional employers’ association to encourage innovation in companies in terms of sustainability or to enable them to measure the impact of their activity with a view to improving it.

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