Three years, eleven months and four days. That is the time that the mountain of Romeu de Sagunt has lasted the protection granted by the Generalitat as a municipal natural area. This old desire of the city council finally came true on March 30, 2019, one day after the decree signed by the President, Ximo Puig, was published, which recognized this enclave as “one of the main green lungs” from the regional capital, as it houses its “largest and best preserved adult forest”.
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However, the Holcim cement company took its opposite position to court, seeing its future threatened in the adjoining Salt del Llop quarry. A first pronouncement of the Superior Court of Justice of the Valencian Community and later the Supreme Court, which did not even admit the appeal for processing, endorsed the theory of the company and annulled the protection through this figure.
Not even 1,500 days of validity
Despite the fact that the sentences were issued on March 31 of last year and on January 11 of this year, they still There was still a procedure to make them effective, which was completed on March 8with which the declaration of municipal natural area was invalidated without the first attempt promoted by the Sagunt City Council and executed by the Department of Agriculture, Rural Development, Climate Emergency and Ecological Transition having exceeded 1,500 days of validity.
The new decree must overcome the main obstacle of its incompatibility with the Mining Law
Even before this official annulment took place, last month’s plenary session discussed the Compromís proposal to urge the Generalitat to restart the protection filesomething that this department of the regional government confirms to Levante-EMV which will take place “shortly”. These same sources specify that “once the City Council’s request was received, through its plenary session held in February, The processing will begin according to the established procedure“.
In the recent political debate, always hot on this matter, that took place in the consistory, in which a representative of the cement workers also participated, one of the points of contention was the possibility of overcoming, with more or less problems, the issues that led to the judicial annulment. Focused on the incompatibility with the Mining Law and the lack of an economic study on the maintenance costs of the area, the municipal government insisted that the protection of the Romeu mountain is not under discussion, while the rest of the formations put at the same level of relevance the maintenance of jobs and appealed to the agreement reached with the company for the signing in 2013 of a health insurance It didn’t take long for it to become a piece of paper.
“The sentence will be taken into account”
On this matter, from the Consell they point out that “logically, the new processing -of the declaration of natural area- will take into account the considerations of the judgmentin coordination with the Sagunt City Council”.