The Punta de la Mona is probably one of the most well known natural assets that the municipality has, together with Cerro Gordo, with its timeless pines, some over a hundred years old, but the concern is over the dead ones.

Why? Hill fires. So some locals have been protesting about the lack of action from the Town Hall to cut them down – unfortunately, the Mayor & Co. don’t appear to be listening.

During the course of winter, several trees fell onto the old road in the Punta, near the Ermita de San José y Santa Rita. The Town Hall unblocked the road by just dragging them off the it but left the fallen trees on the roadside, instead of taking them away, according to locals.

Residents on the Punta wrote to the Town Hall on repeated occasions but according to them, not a squeak was heard from the Town Hall. So they hired a forestry specialist for the drawing up of an “autocorrection plan” for forest fires, which cost the neighbourhood collective 5,000 euros. They sent it to the Town Hall about two months ago.

The plan explains that Punta de la Mona, being a coastal headland, frequently suffers from what experts call the 30-30-30 rule: days with temperatures over 30 degrees Celsius, relative humidity below 30%, and winds that exceed 30 kilometres per hour. This is the same combination seen behind the major wildfires recorded this summer in Madrid. When these three factors coincide, the pine forest loses all its natural resilience against fire.

One of the major obstacles, according to residents, is the administrative “tangle” between public and private areas. Part of these green spaces were public under past urban-development plans, but a change in regulations in 1987 turned them into private property. However, locals point out that even if land is private, “the administration has an obligation to require owners to maintain it in proper conditions to prevent risks,” something that, they say, is not happening either.

The residents themselves estimate that between 10,000 and 15,000 people can live in the area during the summer months. Residents are asking for public green belt to be cleared, for private owners to be forced to do the same on their land, and, if they fail to do so, for the Town Council itself to take official action and charge them later. They also point out that fallen and dry trees must be removed once and for all.

(News: Herradura, Costa Tropical, Granada, Andalucia)

Keywords: Punta de La Mona Problems, Dead Trees, Town Hall, Residents, Locals, Green Belt

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