The former director of the Strategic Plan for Seville 2010, the doctor in geography Enrique Hernandez Martinez (Sevilla 1965), collects in the book Seville and the changes. Urban transformations in the first decade of the 21st century the innovations that the city experienced between 2000-2010, coinciding with the Mayor’s Office of Alfredo Sanchez Monteseirin. It is an extract from his doctoral thesis, the first book in the Geography collection published by the University of Seville and has been presented at the Book Fair.
“This book is not an attempt to vindicate, but to document and now that time can be analyzed with the tranquility it deserves. It is a calm look at that period with data on the table.Projects that generated controversy such as the mushrooms (Metropol Parasol) have not fallen and are now taken on by the whole world”, he affirms. Hernandez maintains that the volume of works and investments made in this decade is comparable to that of the Universal Exposition of 1992, not counting the AVE.
Precisely to mushrooms, how the project and its result were gestured, the book dedicates twenty pages. In relation to the waste of public money that was criticized for this mandate, Hernandez admits that in mushrooms the expected municipal contribution was doubled and points out that this money has been recovered. “I am convinced that the mushrooms have already returned to the city what they cost and as a public space they have amply demonstrated their success., no space in the city has such a diversity of uses and it is the place to see the brotherhoods from its stands”, he assures.
Regarding its cost, he tells us that the University is preparing a study on the matter that will be known shortly . He believes that the mushrooms are the icon that Seville is already in the 21st century and that this construction would not have been possible in the city in the 20th century.
According to the book, the cost of the mushrooms went from 29 to 68.8 million (even though a report in Zoido’s mandate showed that the final cost exceeded 90 million, 75% more than budgeted) and it has not been done new citizen survey on mushrooms after the last one in 2011 that gives a suspense to the project.
The unfinished business for mushrooms, according to Hernandez, is the Antiquarium, due to the need for permanent investment to maintain it. In his opinion, Seville should charge a tourist tax to pay for the maintenance of tourist resources that attract visitors, as other cities do .
Of this decade, Hernandez highlights that it was “a success to channel the yields of urban planning and economic expansion into the growth of the city”with the pedestrianizations (of the Avenida, Plaza Nueva, Alfalfa, Alameda, etc.) and the change in mobility brought about by the bike lane, among the most relevant. It highlights the 7,000 protected homes that Emvisesa delivered in four years, which tripled the management carried out in previous decades. He points out the riverbed regeneration plan with 100 million, after an agreement with the Guadalquivir Hydrographic Confederation, with European funds, and the City Council, for which a green ring was built around the city (Guadaira parks, Vega de Triana, etc. .). Other important changes were the downtown tram (of the City Council) and the first line of the Metro (competence of the Board).
For Hernandez, the impetus for these changes lies in basing them on an urban plan (PGOU of 2006 plus Strategic Plan), which demonstrates “the triumph of planning.”
Improvisations
However, he does not say that there were important improvisations, such as the tram from Plaza Nueva to the Prado. He admits that this transport was not planned in the urban plan, and was incorporated later. “It is true that in the first versions of the PGOU the tram does not appear, but a branch of the Metro to Plaza Nueva. It would have been cheaper and consistent with the transportation system , but there was an inability to assume a political risk, the Board refused to make that branch. In order not to leave the center without public transport, a network of trams for the city is added to the PGOU, which has not been done”.
According to the book, the Prado-Plaza Nueva tram became more expensive from 27.8 million awarded to 68 million, and the extension to San Bernardo cost another 14.16 million. It takes up the opposition’s criticism regarding its high cost with such a short route, the improvisation with which it was made and which duplicates a good part of the Metro layout, but it is not realistic in terms of the demand figure, since it has not been the second line in travelers (in 2019 it was the seventh, with 3.68 million travelers/year).
Another improvisation was to spend the money contributed by the land developers (to the municipal land heritage) on the bike lane, the ‘mushrooms’ and other works, leaving the infrastructure to develop those lands unbuilt.Hernandez sees that expense well.“It was a correct and progressive measure and so it was applied no matter how much the businessmen protested.A change in the land law, coinciding with the elaboration of the PGOU, allowed that money to be dedicated to city projects. I think rightly so because the benefits of the city are for the city”, he affirms. On spending the promoters’ money, he alleges: “It’s not their money; they contribute to the city because they are obtaining enormous profits in exchange for land and that goes to the common stock”.
In 2009-2010, faced with pressure from Gaesco businessmen and employers against this municipal practice (via complaints in court), the City Council rectified and the funds obtained from the municipal land assets would go to the works from which they came. Then came the economic crisis.
Another black chapter of the mandate was to pay 42,000 euros in plastic bags to each shantytown family in Bermejales (when the Urban Planning manager was Manuel Marchena) so that they would abandon the land where thousands of homes had been planned, an error with very negative consequences for the South Polygon. “It is a totally wrong way of acting, but it was a specific error. Of course there were errors in this command, and things that should have been done differently. When many things are done you have the risk of making mistakes, but the worst mistake is not acting. I prefer administrations and rulers who take risks to do things than political quietism. Political risk is a scarce value today”.
That the municipal mandate of Monteseirin brought undoubted changes to the city is true, as it is also true that it ended up being overshadowed by political scandals (false invoices, sale of land in Mercasevilla and others) that are not mentioned in the book. Hernandez believes that the origin of everything was in “a tense political environment, in political and media controversies, but then the sentences come out and everything comes to nothing.” However, the case of the False Invoices did end with two responsible parties in prison: the businessman Jose Pardo and the former secretary of the Macarena district, Jose Marin. It is commendable, he concludes, that in this almost permanent political storm the city was transforming itself and the projects were emerging.
The urgency of a metropolitan management for Seville
The former director of the 2020 Strategic Plan regrets the lack of metropolitan management of the city and its surroundings, despite the metropolitan vocation of the PGOU. “It is not possible for local and provincial administrations and the Board to assume commitments for metropolitan management. In transport it is still flimsy. The coherent thing would be to start by coordinating specific policies: social, housing and land, etc.”, points out Enrique Hernandez.
Hernandez also asks to end the historical isolation of the Poligono Sur by the train tracks
Of the PGOU of Seville, which has not yet been completed, he admits that he has aspects to correct, such as the regulation that affects La Palmera, but as a whole he values his sustainable, progressive and social vision of the city and believes that the priority should be to try fulfill it now that European funds are coming.
He praises that the urban plan is committed to maintaining industrial and productive land without replacing it with tertiary land, which caused the conflict with Altadis, and that the duty of the administration is to maintain the industrial productive sector (as was done with Heineken and with the A-400M), despite the interest of investors in the tertiary sector. He regrets the loss of high-level technological productive land such as that of Abengoa, where the City of Justice is located, and demands that the administrations ensure that “the market does not decide everything in the city”, which is called the right to the city .
Regarding the proliferation of investment in tourism, he believes that “it is easy to obtain investment in hotels and apartments in Seville, although the interest of the city is in making it compatible with productive diversity.” It is committed to taking advantage of the expansive cycle that is taking place after the pandemic to transform the city by managing the large volume of funds that will arrive from Europe.
The city’s unfinished business in urban planning is the burying of the train tracks that separate Poligono Sur from Bami (pending since the 1987 plan) to end the social isolation of these neighborhoods with poverty and marginality.
Also solve the development of Tablada, “which has to be green and public”and solve the ownership of these lands (he is a member of the Citizen Table for Tablada).
Socially, having several of the poorest neighborhoods in the country’s big cities is also a problem to solve.He regrets that the position of society “is not so clear” when it comes to supporting the allocation of a lot of investment to the most needy areas. “That means that politicians don’t want to make that the leitmotiv of their mandate either, and they feel that they won’t be applauded in the streets for these initiatives,” he says. To solve this, an economic and governance boost is needed.
He is in favor of applying the model of the Poligono Sur Commissioner to other areas with needs. “The Junta de Andalucia has to approve and apply a Neighborhood Law for areas with difficulties that works in other cities. The Poligono Sur Commissioner has made interesting advances, but it should recover the relevance it has lost over time and apply the model to other neighbourhoods”.
The book talks about the brave mobility initiatives that caused enormous controversy (Traffic restriction plan in the center, one way in the historic round), although it tiptoes through the fiasco of the underground parking plan for residents that was projected in the neighborhoods, since the majority of the land is private. Nor does it say anything about the poor construction of the underground passages (Bueno Monreal and Ronda del Tamarguillo).
A movie family story
Enrique Hernandez Martinez (Sevilla 1965), the author of the book, is a doctor in Geography and was director of the Strategic Plan of Seville 2020. He presided over the College of Geographers of Andalusia from 2005 to 2017. He is currently a self-employed consultant who advises on issues of urban agenda (strategic and territorial planning, sustainable development and Local 2030 Agenda). In his spare time he is a gardener in Alamillo, where he grows his own products, and a convinced cyclist. He was born in Calle Bailen and grew up in the center of Seville (today he lives in Coca de la Pinera), he went to school in the Patio de San Laureano (which opened as a nightclub at night), and played in the Plaza del Museo with the children of workers. His paternal family, from Granada, and his maternal family from Sevilla Macarena. His ancestors give for another book. His father Enrique Hernandez Alemany was a sacristan and musician -baritone- in the parish of La Magdalena along with Antonio Dominguez Valverde. His grandfather, a carpenter for the 1929 Exposition. And his great-grandfather, Francisco Martinez, Macarena guide cross, was the one who threw the Macarena guide cross to prevent the Great Power from crossing ahead. This was the scandal that led to harmony between the two Brotherhoods.
