Archive image of people walking in front of the Arsenal wall, in Ferrol JOSE PARDO
The agreement to meet the demand to tear down the wall of the Military Arsenal to open the city to the sea was reached in five months and Defense gave its approval after confirming the financing.
16 dic 2023 . Updated at 05:00 a.m.
The thousand steps that are counted in front of the wall of the Ferrol Military Arsenal will stop looking at the wall. The agreement announced between the Ministry of Defense and the City Council to tear down the wall will give the people of Ferrol unprecedented views of the facilities, and allow them to see the sea in a stretch of about 600 meters. The city will conquer its strip of encounter with the military territory, and say goodbye to that stone monster that the socialist mayor Manuel Couce referred to in 1993 when the first 242 meters of wall began to fall. Since then, the Successive corporations tried to fulfill Ferrol’s desire to look at the sea from the center of the city. And three other sections fell later, although none achieved that objective. On Thursday the expected confirmation arrived, which will allow the height of that wall to be lowered by four meters and replaced with a metal fence, which will make Ferrol stop living in the shadow of the wall.
After a frustrated joint appearance, the Minister of Defense, Margarita Robles, and the mayor, José Manuel Rey, confirmed, separately and within the wall, the agreement after a negotiation that was carried out in secret. According to sources close to the conversations, The green light came after the new Government took office, but its management began much earlier. In Defense they were already aware of Ferrol’s intentions to tear down the wall several mandates ago. But until now the button that would allow it had never been activated.
The incorporation into the municipal budgets in July of this year of an item to open Ferrol to the sea was the starting point. The new mayor, Rey Varela, managed in parallel the conversations with the Xunta to achieve the commitment to autonomous financing of 50% of the investment, which President Alfonso Rueda announced during his visit to Ferrol. It is now known that the overall cost amounts to 4.7 million euros and that will include other aspects of urban reorganization beyond the wall. With the financing secured and the reports prepared, the same sources point out, the mayor took advantage of the meetings with senior officials of the ministry due to the agreement with Defense to address the future of the wall.
Three parking spaces and a bike lane in the project to open Ferrol to the sea
roco pita parade
Two names were decisive in the Defense s. The first, that of Ignacio Frutos, chief admiral of the Ferrol Military Arsenal and expert in digital transformation, who valued the project to find the fit of make opening compatible with security, the main concern of Minister Robles in this performance, as she herself stated the day before yesterday. And also that of Antonio Pieiro, admiral chief of the Navy (Ajema), who was convinced that the project had to go ahead. The ties of both with the city also pushed the final decision. And, these sources report, in the military sphere the presence in Madrid and the role of Rey Varela as president of the Senate Defense Commission also weighed.
A unanimous demand
For the city, tearing down the wall is a symbol. And a collective lawsuit that parties of all stripes have raised. The now renewed minister publicly assured in the last municipal campaign that she would help the then mayor and candidate for re-election, the socialist Ángel Mato, to achieve the objective of opening Ferrol to the sea. In 2011, with Mato as Urban Planning councilor and Vicente Irisarri as councilor, a project was presented that provided for the lowering of the wall and opening large openings with bars, similar to the one now proposed, but more limited in its opening. And the PSOE of Ferrol claims the work carried out last term to achieve the objective, highlighting the commitment of Pedro Sánchez’s Executive.
For its part, the BNG qualifies as good news the announcement of the replacement of the Arsenal wall which, even if only visually, should allow us to start tearing down those physical but also mental walls that limit our future, the spokesman in Ferrol declared yesterday , Ivan Rivas.
Tearing down the wall that separates military and civil land will mean the aesthetic and functional transformation of Irmandios Avenue, which will reorganize its traffic and have a bike lane, and which will be the main access point to the city after the opening of the last stretch of the highway, which dies at the port.
Filed in: Ferrol city Ministry of Defense
2023-12-16 05:31:36
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