Gijón cancels DGT labels, opening city center to all traffic

Gijón cancels DGT labels, opening city center to all traffic

To stop requiring an environmental label, there is no need to prove that air quality improved. Gijón has just verified this: on its first day, Mayor Carmen Moriyón announced that "steps have been taken" to repeal the Mobility Ordinance, granting vehicles absolute freedom of circulation and parking in streets and roads, without a DGT environmental sticker. This is not an isolated gesture: it is the core of the government agreement Foro, PP and Vox have signed to govern in coalition for the next four years.

The legal framework helps. The Asturias High Court annulled the previous administration's Mobility Plan due to flaws in its economic report. The former executive appealed to the Supreme Court, which stalled that annulment. The new managers have already outlined the guidelines to withdraw the appeal and leave the ruling in place.

What happens with DGT labels in Gijón?

The repealed ordinance had, according to a participant in the debate, a curious architecture: it prohibited parking in the entire ORA zone during its operating hours for vehicles without a sticker, but did not prevent them from driving through those same streets, and after eight in the evening, it again allowed parking, as if the air stopped getting dirty at night. This design ended up in the courts.

The announcement comes with physical reversal. Moriyón wants traffic on the San Lorenzo Wall to return to 2019 levels, and her team studies undoing the works on the route within a timeframe she sets at no more than "a month and a half." All, she says, coordinated with the Local Police, whom she visited before announcing it.

Bullfests at El Bibio: a shorter fair

The other wing of the agreement is bullfighting. Bullfests return to the El Bibio square during the Great Fair, in a fair "not as usual in other years," but shorter, with one of the bullfests scheduled for August 15, the antiestéticast day of Begoña. The last fair was held in August 2021, and the concession, which ended in 2022, was rescinded a year early by the previous socialist mayor, Ana González, after a bullfight with two bulls named 'Feminist' and 'Nigerian'. González then declared that "if the world of bullfighting is this, frankly it does not contribute much to a city like ours."

Internal noise also reached the press conference: Moriyón responded to resignations in her party trinc the pact with Vox. She said she had no official knowledge, showed her absolute support for the general secretary, Adrián Pumares, and downplayed the issue: "one person has left the Executive Committee, but not the governing commission," which in her scale "is not so many resignations."

The numbers that cross in the air

When measuring, the circulating figures do not fit the simplest narrative. According to the figures cited by a participant in the debate, Spain registers an average weighted exposure to PM2.5 particles of 9.74 µg/m³, below Japan's 11.36, and still holds the second place worldwide in life expectancy, only behind the Asian country. Spain is also the European leader in meat consumption, with about 100 kilos per person per year according to the FAO, and has a vehicle fleet with a strong diesel presence.

From this comes the argument defended by that participant: if particles do not explain longevity, the label serves another purpose. Parallelly, it is argued that in a medium-sized city like Gijón, pollution comes mainly from industrial areas, not road traffic, and that a lone car in a village is not the same as hundreds of thousands of daily commutes. The rebuttal, others maintain, is equally direct: the lungs of those living outside the city center are also polluted, and the restriction does not save the planet, it just moves the smoke a few meters.

Parking, the 1.05 euro bus and the work van

Where the issue becomes tangible is in daily logistics. An installer describes it plainly: with the van, you cannot park in the center, so the partner goes around the block while the other does a quick job, polluting much more than if they had parked. The restriction, he argues, hits those who cannot telecommute or take the metro with a toolbox.

The alternative also has a price. According to another participant, in Asturias there is a bus card covering the route from the capital to the airport for 1.05 euros (three zones), compared to the 9 euros it cost before. The underlying thesis is simple: if public transport truly compensates, people take it without anyone forbidding them; if it does not compensate, the label only punishes those who cannot change cars.

---

It is predictable that the measure will be copied. Other cities are already pointing to next to withdraw restrictions, and the tug-of-war between European mobility funds and local ordinances has only just begun. With Gijón's mobility ordinance heading for the trash and the Supreme Court about to be left without an appeal, the uncomfortable question is no longer whether the air will improve. It is whether anyone will ever measure it.