Overview
- Madrid’s urbanism chief, speaking Wednesday at the city’s Tree Board meeting, said Juan Carlos I, Juan Pablo II and Lineal del Manzanares will stay open during red wind alerts with risky areas cordoned off.
- For these three parks the red-alert trigger will be gusts above 75 km/h, which raises the bar for closures and shifts the response to localized barriers instead of full shutdowns.
- Historic parks including El Retiro will use relaxed wind thresholds, with orange at 45–60 km/h and red from 60 km/h, and they will still close under red conditions.
- The city expects the new protocols to start in June, while this year’s Book Fair in El Retiro will run under the current closure rules.
- Officials cite younger tree stock and park layout in the three sites, a 12-year incident analysis by the Green Zones directorate, and new MIRAR monitoring, and they say the changes could have avoided about one-third of Retiro’s 2021 closures.