Urban Gardens in San Sebastián de los Reyes

Hello! How are you? I am writing to you from San Sebastián de los Reyes and at least here we are experiencing the fourth day of consecutive rains, noting that summer is already far behind and we are in autumn.

This is already beginning to be noticed in the activities in the fields and in the orchards. and I give you two examples that perhaps some of you have already done these days.

In the garden, as we explained in the article THE GARDEN DURING THE YEAR, my father and I have already plowed and planted some typical winter crops.

In the field, I have already been able to enjoy the first weekend of mushrooms. Surely, many of you will have collected more than me hehehe in case you are curious about what I like to collect with my basket, I like to pick oyster mushrooms (Pleurotus eryngii).

It is a delight to enjoy the smell of wet earth and to feel the cold after summer while you collect any type of edible mushroom. Always yes, with high values ​​of responsibility, both when collecting the fungus by cutting only the foot (the stem) to collect the crown (the hat) and always with a basket that allows the spores to fall to the ground again. while we walk Anyway, this is not the topic I would like to talk about with you, although if you are interested, you can tell us about it in the forum or on Facebook. Today I am here to tell you about the organic gardens of San Sebastián de los Reyes and perhaps the question that you are asking yourself is…

Where is San Sebastián de los Reyes?

To answer this question I am going to ask you another question, do you remember the orchards in ALCOBENDAS? A few weeks ago we told you about the orchards that we found in this Madrid municipality and this town is closely related to Sanse (it is the diminutive of San Sebastián de los Reyes) since they fled due to the bad conditions that the Lord of Alcobendas imposed on their neighbors and they settled around the hermitage of San Sebastián. In 1492, the Catholic Monarchs gave these residents permission to found the town of San Sebastián de los Reyes. So, as you can guess, we are in a municipality in the north of Madrid.

Some data from Sanse….

It is a municipality of about 80,000 inhabitants that is located next to the Cuenca Alta del Manzanares Regional Park, having in its territory the Dehesa Boyal and bordering the Monte de Viñuelas; both, large extensions of oaks and ash trees. The Monte de Viñuelas is private but the Dehesa Boyal was in danger due to the construction of a motorway (M-50) that finally, thanks to the neighbors, the section that would have passed over this holm oak was not built. In addition, several streams circulate that bring water to the city.

Something else that you may be interested in knowing about Sanse is that it is known as » La Pamplona Chica «, this is because one of the largest bull runs in all of Spain is celebrated during the Santísimo Cristo de los Remedios festivities.

The orchards of San Sebastián de los Reyes

And the orchards of San Sebastián de los Reyes are abandoned….

Yes, San Sebastián de los Reyes does not have urban gardens. Perhaps at this time many of the readers have already left but it is so, there are no organic gardens in San Sebastián de los Reyes. I am a resident of this large municipality, but for more than five years, Sanse «has» a space reserved for the practice of orchards but at the moment it is still standing as the following photos show:

As you can see, there are reserved areas but they have been like this for a while. More than a month ago, we tried to give the City Council the opportunity to explain to us how they did it in Alcobendas or in other associations, what is the project or the idea that they have, but we received the following email in response that I copied and pasted:

According to indications from the Councilor for the Environment, he tells us that the urban garden program will begin shortly, so now is not the best time. Within a few months we will notify you so that you can make the report.

A greeting

In addition to this email, we tried to get in touch with the City Council and with the Councilor for the Environment, but we were unable to contact them. Yes, we were able to speak with an official from the City Council and he confirmed that at the moment it was not known what he was going to do with the orchards.

In my opinion, both as editor of Agrohuerto.com and above all as a neighbor, this answer seems to me to be brief and without a fixed direction.

These photos were taken 9 days ago and it is true that it seems that after the abandonment that we have seen for years, neighbors like me who have suffered this space paid for by the City Council, the land is being conditioned a little more. An example of this abandonment, in the photo you see on the right, a tree had grown. Yes, a tree in the middle of the door.

It would seem a bit absurd to me that the City Council of San Sebastián de los Reyes has had to wait for other City Councils to set up their own urban gardens and see the demand of the neighbors to realize it. Since if at the time he had bet heavily on it, he would have been one of the pioneers.

And I say strongly because you cannot build a structure like this in which from the fence (because one cannot access) you can see that the terraces are designed, there are water intakes and there is a place to store the tools; all unused since its construction, I repeat, more than 5 years ago.

Finally, let us tell you that there is no review on urban gardens on the website of the City Council of San Sebastián de los Reyes. There is only one blog about the school gardens in the municipality, but there is no information about future projects of this infrastructure that we have talked about today. If we use the search engine on the web, it only relates us to information related to composting where we find several articles and videos. I insist, very little information about it. We hope that it is true that an urban garden program is going to be carried out soon and we can explain it to you.

Greetings and enjoy the fall