“We have been living here for fourteen years and tolerating this noise. It doesn’t stop once, there’s the sound of traffic day and night; it wakes me up two or three times every night. In the end, it is also reflected in one’s own health. You're nervous as soon as you leave the house, always under stress. Get used to it? You won’t get used to this.”

Emilio Asla lives on Sabino Arana Street in Bilbao, as you can see in the photo above, but the photo is not made from his house. In reality, Asla gets cars much closer than you can see there; 80,000 vehicles per hour during peak hours, according to the data provided by the Association of Neighbors of Basurto. The double window protects a little, but in return, it condemns you to open the window rarely.

One of the greatest evils of the modern city

Emilio
Asla’s suffering is the result of living next to the main entrance of the city, similar to the suffering suffered by millions of people in the world. The World Health Organization says that eight out of ten people living in cities suffer louder noise than would be advisable. In environmental surveys conducted in the Spanish state, the main complaint that citizens make is noise, which is not surprising, since it is the second most noisy country in the world, after Japan.

The damage to health is of various kinds. Hearing loss can occur in excess of a certain number of decibels (see chart on page 8), but even without it psychological and physical problems arise. César San Juan, Professor of Environmental Psychology at the University of the Basque Country, tells us about them: “Not being able to sleep is one of the consequences of noise, which has a psychological effect: difficulty concentrating, changes in mood... In the long run, the physical damage that is usually caused by a lack of adequate rest can occur.” In addition

to the intensity of the noise, one must take into account one’s own sensitivity: the same noise does not affect us all in the same way. Likewise, 65 decibels are considered to be the limit of what can be tolerated, but this may vary depending on the context. A buzz of 45 decibels can be enough to prevent dialogue between the two people, or to prevent sleep. Incidentally, it should be noted that decibels are not measured in normal arithmetic progression because they are a logarithmic unit. A rise of three decibels does not mean that there is a little more noise, but that the intensity of the noise has doubled.

65 decibels per day, 55 decibels per night

Just a few weeks ago, the Federation of Neighbourhood Associations of Bilbao released a report on the pollution that the capital of Bizkaia is suffering from, including data on noise pollution, worrying data at all: 39% of Bilbao suffers from an unacceptable level of noise, compared to 46% at night. The president of the Federation, Javier Muñoz, explained that they have relied on the values established by the municipal ordinance to determine the limit of “unacceptable”. That is to say, a maximum of 65 decibels per day and 55 decibels per night, always in the vicinity of the dwellings. Values vary slightly, up or down depending on the case, in areas where there are health centers and/or schools, mainly in commercial areas and industrial areas. The values are very similar, by the way, in all the municipal ordinances of the Basque Country and the Spanish Noise Law. A law that is only seven years old, too. One reason why the Spanish State is so high in the classification of noise is the legal vacuum that has persisted for a long time.

Back in Bilbao, the report of the Federation of Neighbourhood Associations states that during the day there are values of more than 85 decibels in different areas of the city near the A-8 motorway, including – and especially in this street – the Sabino Arana street mentioned above. The main cause of noise, as in Bilbao throughout the world, is traffic. And without a radical change in the organization of traffic, Bilbao and many other cities will hardly comply with their ordinances; in the decibel tables that can be found anywhere on the Internet, the street where many vehicles circulate is always attributed 80 or 90.

Provincial Council of Biscay for not preventing noise to the court

In view of this, or perhaps it would be more correct to “listen”, the puzzles of Emilio Asla and hundreds of his neighbors are understandable. To tell you the truth, when Asla bought the house the viaduct of Sabino Arana street was made, it can’t be said that she didn’t know the noise problem beforehand. “But they tricked us,” he complains, “they told us they had to make a new road without delay and throw this away.” The Provincial Council of Biscay, the entity in charge of managing the viaduct, has made this promise several times, for almost twenty years, to the affected inhabitants of Sabino Arana, and on several occasions has not kept its promise. Now that the works of the new access to San Mamés, which will replace the Viaduktotzarra, have begun, the indignation of the neighbors is irreversible: In 2008, the bosses of nearly 200 households filed a lawsuit against the Diputación seeking compensation for the moral damages they had suffered for years.

The lawyer representing the victims of Sabino Arana in this case is Alfonso Terceño from Bilbao. He specializes in noise-related litigation and is a member of the Spanish Jurists Against Noise (Juristas Contra el Ruido).“Moral damages are a person’s psychic sufferings due to noise,” he explains, “not to be confused with suffering from mental illness or neurosis.” It is very difficult, according to Terceño, to prove that the origin of impatience is noise, but in practice it is not necessary: according to the law, it is enough to prove that the number of decibels imposed by the regulation has been exceeded to establish that there has been moral damage. In the case of Sabino Arana, the Public University of Navarra was in charge of carrying out the measurements. Emilio Asla is still well aware of the meter that was placed near the window for a week. The evidence obtained through it allows them to charge 65,000 euros if the judge finally gives them a reason. This is the compensation that Terceño has demanded for 90% of the complainants, who have suffered more than seven years of traffic jams.

But despite being a very widespread problem, there are few lawsuits like the one filed by Sabino Arana. “In this sense, this has been quite pioneering,” says Terceño, “in noise surveys people complain more about traffic, but rarely go to court for it. It is much more common to file complaints against hospitality businesses.” Perhaps

the reason for this attitude is the different perceptions we have of the sources of noise. César San Juan explains that noise nuisances are also conditioned by non-acoustic factors. “It also affects us whether or not what we’re hearing is inevitable. For example, if the noise of traffic on the street is 75 decibels, and at the same time the dog of the neighbor is barking, also causing 75 decibels, the dog will make us much more inconvenient, we can not stop the traffic, but we think it is possible to silence the dog.”

A growing awareness

The biggest mistake of the Spanish Noise Law is that it arrived too late. Otherwise, it is a good law, according to Alfonso Terceño. For this reason, and also because of our growing sensitivity to the problem, the demands against noise, as well as judicial complaints, are on the rise. But that’s not going to make our environment any quieter. César San Juan wishes to emphasize that so far we have only shown a defensive attitude towards noise: “We’ve only tried to patch up the mistakes we made so far.” For example, in Calle Sabino Arana, too late – and spending too little – the Provincial Council put up barriers that, as we can see in the house of Emilio Asla, are of little use. “The 21st century. The challenge of urbanism in the 21st century is to leap from a defensive attitude to prevention”, says the UPV professor, creating limited spaces for activities that generate a lot of noise”. Let us not forget, however, that this noise issue is relatively new to us. According to San Juan, our cities have been dependent on traffic for 50 years. From an evolutionary point of view, last night is this loudly society that we have created.