The Contentious-Administrative Court number 19 of Madrid has dismissed the appeal filed by the Neighborhood Association El Organillo de Chamberí and three neighbors against the city council of the capital for their “inactivity” due to the noise of the hotel terraces.
According to the ruling, “there has been no evidence of any inaction on the part of the Madrid City Council when the interventions of the Local Police, the processing of complaints, and the opening and processing of the corresponding sanctioning files for noise on public roads have been recorded since the year 2016».
In this sense, it specifies that the council was already carrying out the necessary actions for the processing of the Ponzano Special Acoustic Protection Zone plan.
Although, in the appeal of the neighborhood association, it was requested “that all the terraces extraordinarily authorized on the road or on the sidewalk be removed immediately because the situation that caused them has disappeared.”
They also aimed to limit the hours of operation of the Chamberí terraces until 11 pm, as well as limit the hours of operation of nightlife activities until ambient noise levels are tolerable.
As stated by the complainants in the brief presented in the Senior Court of Administrative Litigation of Madrid, the neighborhood registers excesses of between 30 and 40 decibels of the maximum levels allowed for industrial areas at night, so that they suffer a situation of serious risk. for your health, in accordance with article 53 of the municipal ordinance.
The Organillo decided to contract the services of an acoustic engineer to carry out noise measurements from the 1st to the 4th of last October. The result of this measurement campaign indicates that the levels evaluated even exceed the limits corresponding to the least sensitive acoustic area established in current legislation, that of industrial use.
The Madrid City Council is going to declare a Special Acoustic Protection Zone (ZPAE) for different streets in the Ponzano-Trafalgar neighborhoods after completing the measurement campaign that has been carried out in the area for six months, and which concludes that “leisure it is the main noise source during the night periods from Thursday to Sunday».
Processing has already begun from the Environment and Mobility area after this area of the Chamberí district has accumulated “numerous complaints and neighborhood complaints about noise as a result of the proliferation of new recreational activities, as well as the enhancement of the already existing”.
The measurements have been carried out between the months of September 2021 and February 2022 with the aim of determining the acoustic situation of this area, evaluating the fulfillment of the objectives in this matter and the possibility of declaring the area as special acoustic protection, in compliance with article 25, of Law 37/2003, of November 17, on Noise.
