Miquel Clos assures that he continues to water part of the trees because the automatic irrigation system is not working. He is also promoting a petition to have the 1,733 euros fine imposed by the Mataró City Council returned to him, as reported by La Vanguardia, based on the civility ordinance. He rejects any crowdfunding campaign, as some readers who also send him hundreds of messages of support have proposed.
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The controversy over the 1,733 euro fine imposed by the Mataró City Council (Maresme) on the resident of Calle del Cos for planting five trees and restoring two public benches without authorization is still ongoing. Following the significant media coverage of the case, the resident now reports that the trees planted by the council to replace his own are drying out due to lack of irrigation, as are many of the planters, while the benches that the municipal brigade removed for repainting are once again showing a serious state of deterioration.
Clos assures that the five trees he had planted in August 2024 were not lost. He recounts that when the municipal brigade came to remove them, in the spring of 2025, he arrived just as the workers had already uprooted them and had them leaning against the wall, about to be taken away. After speaking with the head of the brigade, he was able to recover them. Of all of them, only two have survived and “I have them on my home terrace, very beautiful.”
However, he maintains that the new specimens planted by the City Council are in a very different state. As he explains, they are trees of a more ornamental species but also more demanding in terms of irrigation. “My trees accumulated water in the trunk and practically needed no maintenance. The ones the City Council has planted are prettier, but they also need much more water,” he states.
The resident assures that the street’s automatic irrigation system has not been working for some time and that this incident had been reported to municipal workers and the Citizen Attention Office even before the new trees were planted. According to him, during the replacement work, the gardeners themselves showed him that the solenoid valves in the inspection chamber were faulty and that several irrigation lines did not reach either the tree pits or the planters.
This situation, he says, has caused the trees he himself is obliged to water to be the only ones that remain in good condition, while those that do not receive this neighborhood maintenance show clear symptoms of deterioration and drought. The situation is even more evident, he explains, in the planters associated with each tree, where many of the plants have ended up drying out.
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After the sanction, Clos assures that he has stopped reporting these incidents to the City Council. “I had already told them before, and now they claim they had no knowledge.” Now, he assures, “I limit myself to watering the trees I can because, otherwise, they die,” albeit furtively, risking another sanction for “carrying out tasks that are not his responsibility,” as the municipal government (PSC-Comuns) replied yesterday.
Another of the resident’s criticisms focuses on the two restored benches. He recalls that in December 2024, the municipal brigade completely dismantled them, removed the pavement tiles, and took everything away, including the benches for repainting. According to him, the action was disproportionate because they only applied a new coat of paint, and a year and a half later, the drawings he made and the treatment he himself had applied with teak oil are visible again.
The repercussions of the case have led to an outpouring of support and criticism of the municipal decision, and even proposals from citizens for him to start a crowdfunding campaign to help him pay the fine. However, Clos completely rejects this option.
“I don’t want money from citizens. If someone has to return that money to me, it’s the City Council. I don’t want to benefit financially from this situation,” he assures. Instead of crowdfunding, he announces that he will indeed launch a petition to gather support for the council to review the sanction and return the money, while also demanding adequate maintenance of the street’s trees and green areas.
The initiative comes as the case continues to generate political and public debate in Mataró and the rest of Spain, after the sanction imposed for an action that the resident himself defends as an improvement of public space has transcended the local sphere and has been echoed in media throughout Catalonia and the rest of Spain. Political groups have not failed to visit his home to take photographs sitting on the bench, such as ERC, in opposition, but Clos prefers “not to attend to them, I don’t want the issue to be politicized.”
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