The mayor assures during the balance of his first hundred days of government that the Puerta de Alcalá will be open to the public before the end of the year
To the members of the Environment Area who in the last year have dedicated themselves to cleaning graffiti from the streets of Madrid, the capital’s City Council will now add 40 municipal police officers that they are going to dedicate themselves exclusively to persecuting their authors. The ‘anti-graffiti patrol‘ by José Luis Martínez Almeida, a specific unit of the local forces of Madrid, will be fully operational in mid-October.
The project for its creation will be approved by the Governing Board this week and the new Urban Heritage Protection Section, that is what this unit will be called, will be equipped with “12 agents per shift, in morning, afternoon and night shifts, together with commanders”, according to the information provided by the Security and Emergencies Area directed by the vice mayor. Inma Sanz.
The objective of this section, which was promised by Almeida during the electoral campaign and which with his absolute majority is about to be launched, is chase the “illegal creation” of the “vandalism graffiti that litters the city” and increase sanctions, “counting for this with more resources and the presence of plainclothes agents,” they explain from the City Council. These 40 agents thus join the 55 environmental workers who, since the summer of 2022, have gone to clean areas where notices of new graffiti or street graffiti have been received.
Municipal balance
This measure will come just after one hundred days of Almeida’s government, who took advantage of this Monday to take stock and also announce that the repair works on the Puerta de Alcalá will end in the coming weeks and that he is confident that the monument will be completely cleared in November to match the Christmas lighting. The rehabilitation work on the “pathologies” of this architectural work began last February and the mayor has stated that they are practically solved.
The first mayor has made his balance in the Cibeles Palace accompanied by the 28 councilors of the popular municipal group that supports the local government, which has generated criticism from the opposition who understands that she should have been invited to an event like this. The mayor, on the other hand, has ironically commented on this lament. “They should not have too much opposition work when that is their main criticism” of his first hundred days of government with an absolute majority, Almeida has boasted, launching a triumphalist speech in which he wanted to make it clear that the objective of his executive is to “consolidate” the “emergence” that Madrid has experienced to turn it into a city of international reference and in the “place to be.”
Along with the balance of the main measures that he has implemented since he took office for the second time on June 17, since the approval of the urban planning regulations that he carried over from the previous legislature, the 93 million euros of investment approved for municipal infrastructures and services or the constitution of a commission to promote birth rates, among others, Almeida has also explained that in the next three months his priority will be the approval of the municipal budgets and tax ordinances for the year 2024, since the current ones have been extended from 2021.