The municipalities of Murcia and Plasencia, the Miramón Technology Park and the DesAUTOxícate campaign, winners of the gold medal of the Spanish Sustainable Mobility Week Awards 2015

The Secretary of State for the Environment, Pablo Saavedra, today presided over the awards ceremony for the Spanish Sustainable Mobility Week 2015, as part of the European Mobility Week (EMS), which is held this year under the slogan: “Choose. Changes. Combines. Your mobility.”
It is an initiative promoted by the European Commission and coordinated in Spain by the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and Environment with the aim of promoting sustainable mobility. This edition of the SEM has brought together 340 Spanish municipalities with a total of almost 22 million inhabitants.
With the ceremony of the V Edition of the Awards of the Spanish Sustainable Mobility Week 2015 (SEMS-2015 Awards), this year’s SEM concludes with the recognition of the work carried out by city councils, companies and organizations and the media in the promotion of the values of sustainable mobility.
During the presentation of these awards, the Secretary of State for the Environment, Pablo Saavedra, highlighted the importance of reinforcing the commitment to sustainable mobility practices that help improve air quality and quality of life in cities and valued the great participation of city councils and citizens in this initiative.
MULTIDISCIPLINARY CHALLENGE
He explained that sustainable mobility arises to change a transport model based on the private car and that it is not a mere technical challenge, since “the process of change demands innovative and revolutionary ideas to transition to emission-free, interconnected and electric mobility”.
Saavedra also stressed that it is “a multidisciplinary challenge that requires the participation of society as a whole” because “we need to build the cities of the 21st century together: efficient, clean, sustainable, cities in which we want to live”.
In this regard, he highlighted that the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and the Environment has launched numerous projects to support sustainable mobility such as the National Plan for Air Quality and Protection of the Atmosphere (Plan AIRE) 2013-2016, the Plans to Promote the Environment (PIMA AIRE and PIMA AIRE 2) and the Climate Projects. In addition, the Ministry participates in initiatives such as the Spanish Sustainable Mobility Strategy, the Metropolitan Mobility Observatory and the European Mobility Week.
SEMS AWARDS 2015
In the category of municipalities with more than 50,000 inhabitants, the gold medal has been awarded to the City Council of Murcia, for its leadership in the use of the bicycle as a mode of transport and social participation through the Municipal Bicycle Observatory.
The City Council of Vigo has obtained the silver medal, for its effort and trajectory to form a great improvement project in favor of a livable and friendly city, while the City Council of Estepona (Malaga) has won the bronze medal, for the wide pedestrianization and improvement of the accessibility of the urban area.
In the category of towns of between 3,000-50,000 inhabitants, the municipality of Plasencia (Cáceres) has been recognized with gold, for the extensive development of school mobility and road safety. The exaequo silver medal has been awarded to Peal de Becerro (Jaén) and Herrera del Duque (Badajoz), in recognition of the trajectory of both in the promotion of sustainable mobility. The City Council of Calpe has been awarded the bronze medal for the measures taken to promote the use of bicycles.
Among the award-winning companies and institutions, this year the gold medal has been awarded to the Miramón Science and Technology Park (Guipúzcoa), for having created a sustainable mobility management model in large workplaces, including the creation of a Sustainable Mobility Committee that integrates all the companies installed in the Park.
In the field of labour mobility, second place went to Iberdrola for implementing and promoting sustainable mobility measures among its employees and customers. Finally, the Tecnalia Research & Innovation Foundation and Technology Centre has won the bronze medal for its efforts to rationalise and sustainably design mobility between its work centres.
In the communication category, the campaign “DesAUTOxícate. Towards more sustainable modes of mobility due to the success it has achieved through an innovative and participatory format.
GREAT PARTICIPATION
Among the autonomous communities with the highest level of participation this year in the SEM are Catalonia, Andalusia, the Basque Country, the Valencian Community, Madrid and Castilla y León. Spain thus maintains second place in terms of European countries with the highest participation in this initiative.
In this way, and as has been traditional since the beginning of this European campaign in 2002, Spain has once again become the country in which the largest number of permanent initiatives – for the transformation of the city and not for dissemination – have been carried out, with 1,956 permanent measures carried out in the last year.
Along with these measures, each of the participating City Councils has carried out, during this week and under the slogan “Choose. Changes. Combines. Your Mobility”, a programme of activities to disseminate sustainable mobility among its citizens, including traffic cuts on emblematic avenues, cycling or pedestrian marches, creativity competitions, school competitions, etc.
The week closes today with the celebration of Car-Free Day, an event that a total of 131 municipalities throughout the country have joined this year, limiting private traffic on their streets and encouraging their citizens to use public transport or other alternative ways, at least during this day.