A century-old ficus tree has just died in Seville after two years of agony. It is the best example of how Spain is killing its urban trees

On August 17, 2022, the 9th Administrative Litigation Court of Seville agreed to order a halt to logging from the ficus tree in the parish of San Jacinto in Seville, “due to the fact that circumstances of particular urgency were detected.” There were. Oh yes there were.

When the order came, the workers were finishing up. Despite three people climbing up the tree to prevent it from being cut down, work had started at midday before and had continued through the night, protected by up to 29 local police officers.

Two years later, everything seems to indicate that the ficus is dead.

All this fuss over a tree? Not just any one, of course. The San Jacinto ficus It was over a hundred years old (it was planted in 1913), had a span of 24 metres in height and was declared a Site of Cultural Interest with the classification of “monument”.

And, what’s more, the ficus quickly became a symbol of an endemic evil in the country: contempt and lack of care that is given to urban trees in Spain.

And why did they want to cut it down? On May 31 of that year 2022, the Executive Commission of the Urban Planning and Environment Management of the Seville City Council “granted the license to the parish to proceed with the felling of the ficus tree.” All parties (except Podemos, which abstained) voted in favour and the procedure was left pending the authorization of the Provincial Commission of Historical Heritage of the Junta de Andalucía, as it is a Site of Cultural Interest.

The reason for cutting it down was a report prepared at the request of the Dominican Order, in which they warned of “risks for people in an area of ​​high pedestrian traffic” and effects on the adjacent buildings that are also subject to special protection. The previous year, a branch fell had caused several injuries (one of them seriously) and the parish asked for its felling after, in his own words“spending many years looking for different solutions.”

What was the problem, then? That voices quickly arose (both of activists as of professionals) that questioned the conclusions of the Church’s report and They denounced that the authorization for the felling had been carried out “without any technical report prepared by an arborist to support the possibility of combining the survival of the ficus with the safety of people and the building.”

In 2021, the same City Council had recognized that all these alleged risks were “a consequence of the drastic pruning that it has suffered throughout its history and the environment in which this specimen develops.” And as explained by the association Save the ficusthese same technicians had proposed “putting up a rigid, vegetal pergola to prevent branches from falling into the street or a retaining wall for the roots, in addition to improving irrigation” and, of course, ending “aggressive pruning” (which always ends up being a problem in the medium term).

And in light of this, the process was accelerated. Although the facts were being investigated by another court, It seemed proven that on August 16, 2022the 9th Administrative Court warned the City Council that it was considering stopping the felling and, specifically, that it had two days to make a “very precautionary” decision. It did not use up those two days. On the 17th the decision was made, but it was too late.

Chronicle of a Death Foretold. During these two years the City Council, which took charge of the care of what remained of the tree, more than 13,000 euros have been spent in trying to get it ahead. But it has all been in vain.

Sources from the Seville delegation of Parks and Gardens They said in El País They were convinced that the tree “would have the vitality to recover and that is why in the first few months we facilitated this regeneration. […] But the tree has gone backwards and there are no signs of new shoots or possibility of survival.” Another anonymous source from the company that has treated the ficus these months said that “the tree is 99% dead.”

A media case of a widespread problem. Because, in fact, the San Jacinto ficus is nothing more than the best-known case of a real plague: poor care that is given to urban trees in Spain. The causes are diverse, but can be summarized simply: few resources, poor management and political decisions isolated from any current technical knowledge.

It is curious that now that we know that trees help reduce atmospheric pollutants and mitigate the urban heat island effect, we do not take all this more seriously. That is why the case of the ficus is important, because it shows that no matter how much protection the natural environment has, today it is not safe.

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