The Sierra de Guadarrama National Park has a slope in Castilla y León for which a budget has been assigned in 2025 that exceeds 17 million euros. Among the planned improvements is the construction of viewpoints, restoration of burned land and much more.
The plenary session of the Board of Trustees of the Sierra de Guadarrama National Park has met by videoconference in order to report on the action plan for the year 2025, among other items on the agenda. The budget planned for next year in this enclave amounts to 30,403,427.10 euros, the highest number in history of this protected space.
These accounts include various sources of financing. On the one hand, the administrations of the two communities autonomous park managers, Castilla y León and Madrid; and on the other, the Autonomous Organization for National Parks (OAPN), dependent on the Ministry for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge. In addition, this budget is considerably increased by the funds from the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience (PRTR), financed by the European Union.
Action plan 2025 for Guadarrama Park
Among the functions of the Board of Trustees of the Sierra de Guadarrama National Park is to inform the programming and the annual budget of the actions to be carried out. Some of the projects included in the 2025 action plan were already announced in previous plans, but their execution has not started or has not yet been completed, and now they are collects the most up-to-date forecast.
For next year, the intended amount run on the Segovian side of the park amounts to 17,136,106.89 euros, 56% of the total investment. The bulk of the budget will be allocated to actions framed in conservation programs (42%); public and social use (34%); administration and management (17%); and relations with the environment and citizen participation (5%).
Among the actions that will be carried out are improvements to habitats and equipment for public and social use. Highlights include the creation of two visitor centers on the Segovian side of the park, one in the old forestry house of ‘Cerrillos Redondos’ in San Rafael (El Espinar), and another in Navafría, as well as the adaptation of the main recreational areas in its peripheral zone of protection.
In addition to the ordinary work to monitor the state of conservation of different species, as habitat conservation actions, it is worth highlighting the pending restoration work through repopulation of the area burned by the 2019 fire of La Granja, the interventions to protect humid meadows and humid peat habitats in the mountains, or the silvicultural actions to improve habitats on masses of Scots pine, as well as the rest of the silvicultural treatments programmed in the sustainable forest management plans of the mountains , which will be largely self-financing or will generate income for their owners.
Other important projects
In addition to the restoration of the building of the future Cerrillos Redondos visitor center, the OAPN will carry out several projects with European PRTR funds. Among them, a new building at the National Center for Environmental Education (CENEAM) that aims replace old buildings for more modern and efficient toras that serve as accommodation and dining areas.
In this way, the old hostel cabins that were in the town of Valsaín will also no longer be used, since the new building will cover all the uses that they offered. In addition, CENEAM plans to replace the current biomass boiler with air-water heat pumps. With this replacement the energy source goes from pellets to electric energy.
The project with the largest economic amount is the burying of the Cercedilla-Puerto de Navacerrada-Puerto de los Cotos high-voltage power line. The park’s declaratory law established the need to eliminate certain environmental impacts of the park like the power lines with their overhead lines.
The work that the OAPN is going to finance with funds from the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan involves creating a new underground line that goes up the Navaelmedio valley traveling forest tracks. And the section between the ports occupying the shoulder of the road. When the underground line is put into service, the dismantling of the overhead line, its wiring, turrets and shoes will begin. The investment will be 9,465,983.23 euros and the execution period will be 24 months.
The Board of Trustees has also reported on the planning project for the private forest ‘Cuartel de Marianito’, located in Revenga, municipality of Segovia. Part of this mountain is within the national park and for this reason it must be submitted to a report from the Board of Trustees, which has been pronounced conditioning planning proposal to what is established in the Master Plan for the Use and Management of the Sierra de Guadarrama National Park.
In May 2022, the Junta de Castilla y León made an extraordinary call, under a competitive competition regime, for subsidies to areas of socioeconomic influence (AIS) of the national parks, associated with the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan and, therefore, with the Next Generation EU funds. Once this call was resolved and notified to all beneficiaries, they were paid 90% in advances in 2024. By 2025 they will be paid the rest of the amount, which in total amounts to 400,912.48 euros.
Furthermore, in July of last year the call for subsidies in biosphere reserves of Castilla y León, also within the framework of the PRTR, granting 677,278.96 euros to local entities of the Real Sitio de San Ildefonso – El Espinar biosphere reserve. In 2025, the remaining 67,727.89 euros will be paid to the beneficiaries, since the rest has already been paid as advances. For both calls for aid, the deadline for justifying the actions was extended until June 2, 2025.
The Park Board will address the action plan for the year 2025 with a historic budget of 30 million euros, including the projects financed by the European funds from the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan.