PP of Sagunto criticises local government over rejection of its LEZ proposals
The PP party in Sagunto says the local government rejected nearly all of its proposals for the Low Emission Zone ordinance, which focused on public transport, park-and-ride facilities and support for local businesses.
Which streets will be off-limits to certain vehicles, and what transport alternatives will exist for people who cannot drive into central Sagunto — that, at its core, is the dispute now pitting the local PP against Mayor Darío Moreno's government. At issue is the ordinance for the Low Emission Zone (LEZ), a restricted-traffic area now mandatory for mid-sized and large Spanish towns, which the council must process as a legal requirement, and for which the PP says it submitted amendments that the local government has rejected almost entirely.
It is worth recalling where that legal requirement comes from. It is not something the current administration invented, nor a decision the council took of its own accord: Ley 7/2021, Spain's climate change and energy transition law, has required all Spanish municipalities with more than 50,000 residents to set up such a zone since 2023. Sagunto, with 73,031 residents according to the 2025 census from INE (Spain's National Statistics Institute), comfortably falls within that threshold — meaning the LEZ was always going to arrive sooner or later, regardless of which party was in charge.
What the PP disputes is not that obligation but how it has played out in practice. The party's council spokesperson, Ximo Catalán, sums up his group's criticism simply: Moreno's government, he argues, settled for doing the bare legal minimum instead of using the rule to genuinely improve the town's mobility. Among the amendments that, according to Catalán, were left out of the final text are stronger bus links, new park-and-ride car parks at the entrances to town, and a study on how the restrictions would affect small shops, hospitality businesses and the self-employed.
The PP's underlying argument concerns the logical order of any traffic restriction: if car access is going to be limited, the party argues, real alternatives need to come first. Catalán specifically calls for more bus connections and parking facilities aimed at people who live outside the town centre and commute into Sagunto daily for work or study — a group he warns could end up penalised without a mobility plan running alongside the restrictions.
The PP also questions where the zone's boundaries have been drawn. In its view, the areas mapped out by the council do not match the parts of town with the worst air quality, and it wants any decision on the boundaries to rest on objective pollution measurements, not merely administrative criteria. It points to other Spanish towns that, it says, are combining traffic restrictions with mobility support measures — an approach it believes Sagunto should copy, so as not to unfairly penalise residents who depend on a private vehicle.
Catalán insists his party is not opposed to the LEZ itself, since following the law is an obligation, but he draws a line between following the rules and governing well. His conclusion is that the council missed the chance to build, together with the opposition, a LEZ model designed around Sagunto's actual needs, rather than settling for a bare-minimum version of the national law. This, it is worth noting, reflects the PP's own political reading of a process the local government has not publicly responded to through this outlet.
For ordinary residents of Sagunto going about their daily commute, the outcome of this political tussle will have a very concrete effect once the ordinance is finalised: it will decide which streets and which types of vehicles face restrictions, and what alternatives — buses, park-and-ride car parks — will actually be available for those who currently rely on their cars to get into town. According to El Periódico de Aquí, with additional information from Ley 7/2021 (Spain's official gazette, BOE) and Wikipedia.