That interpretation is absolutely wrong. The current mayor lost 2 crucial seats that undermined her re-election, 1 was due to the internal feuds in her own leftist coalition (about 40k votes) and at least another seat from the center-left who lost votes to the liberals and even the far-right in their own strongholds.

All of that happened in very low income neighborhoods that are not significantly impacted by the LEZ and outside the M30. In fact, she even got a small but meaningful vote boost from LEZ residents.

Why did people hate the LEZ in your opinion?

EDIT: Article says “City centre residents are happy with the LEZ “

It's probably residents far from the city center that hate the LEZ. Most residents in the center would likely prefer the whole center to be closed to cars, as public transportation is quite good there.

Notice that the politician in question is not a candidate for mayor of the city, it's the candidate governor of the whole region around the city.

> Most residents in the center would likely prefer the whole center to be closed to cars, as public transportation is quite good there.

Are you speaking specifically about residents from Madrid center or just generic city center residents?

They wanted to be able to use their cars, obviously. Why else?

you have a weird definition of democracy if you think that the councils should do whatever their citizens want as a majority.

thousands of people are dying in big cities from pollution and the local government should take unpopular actions to tackle climate change. of course nobody wants to be affected in any way by climate change, they want other people to do it.

>you have a weird definition of democracy if you think that the councils should do whatever their citizens want as a majority.

How is that a "weird definition of democracy"? That's literally what democracy means!

Yes, if a majority of people want policies which result in them dying by the thousands from pollution, then in a democratic system, that's what you have to give them. If the politicians do something highly unpopular, even though it's for the good of the society, they get voted out (assuming there's competing politicians who promise to give the people what they want). That's how democracy works. This is why democratic systems don't work very well when the populace is uneducated and stupid.

democracy doesn't mean that the majority do what they want. they can't violate the rights of minorities. even from ancient Greece from the first democracies these issues were taken into account.