He Doñana national parka UNESCO World Heritage Site, is Europe’s main wetland and one of the outstanding environmental reserves of the biosphere. At a time of serious drought, with ravages due to climate change and when for years there have been warnings that it is drying up the aquifer that feeds the park with water overexploitation of the intensive agriculture, the ‘punctures’ of illegal wells and tourism, the measure processed by the Andalusian Parliament hand in hand with PP and Vox has set off the alarms beyond the Spanish borders. The detractors of the legalization of more irrigation warn of the deterioration in the reputational brand of the red fruits of Huelva and of the entire Spanish environmental policy.
What does the PP and Vox bill say?
The Law Proposal to improve the management of agricultural areas in the County of Huelva in the municipalities of Almonte, Bonares, Lucena del Puerto, Moguer and Rociana del Condado (Huelva) legislates a change in the classification of 1,600 hectares of soil forestry for “their consideration as irrigable agricultural with surface water & rdquor ;. Not all of the area will automatically be titled agricultural land. A technical office will supervise, case by case, some 650 farms and a thousand farmers that in 2014, due to a land reorganization plan in the area of Doñana of the Junta de Andalucía, they were classified as forest land.
The proposal, processed by PP and Vox, does not include any figures but the current Government of Andalusia has estimated that approximately half will become irrigated. everything remains conditional on obtaining water rights, that will depend on the availability of resources and hydraulic works pending execution. The Guadalquivir Hydrographic Confederation, dependent on the national government, has already made it clear that there is no water in the midst of the worst drought in decades and that there are no surpluses of the planned transfers. The irrigators will have land classified as arable but will not have water. It is expected that the initiative, which is processed by urgencysee the light before July.
Where does this conflict with the Condado de Huelva farmers come from?
The County Farmers Association and the Platform in Defense of Doñana Irrigation articulate pressure and protests. They represent, according to their own data, 1,500 farmers who denounce that they have “an uncertain future due to administrative, environmental and commercial pressures& rdquor ;. The plastic and strawberry boom in the Doñana area came in the 1980s and it took years and years to bring order to the proliferation of greenhouses that suffocated the Natural Park. It was a gold mine. The Andalusian government, then of the PSOE, took a long time and approved a first decree just twenty years ago, a Land Management Plan for the Doñana Area of 2003. Of course, it took another ten years to issue a second decree, in 2014, which took concrete measures and which was embodied in a Special Plan for irrigated areas north of the Doñana Forest Crown. A document that comes to amend the bill that is now going to begin processing.
What has the scientific community said?
The president of the Park Participation Council, biologist Miguel Delibes, calls for consensus and warns that the PP and Vox bill is “very negative& rdquor; because “It generates tension & rdquor; and “feeds the conflict & rdquor; in a moment What do i consider “dramatic & rdquor;. The director of the Doñana-CSIC Biological Station, Eloy Revillawarned that the National Park is in “critical condition” and that “more than half of its gaps have disappeared”.
The scientific activity yields devastating results and the scientists are convinced that it is not necessary to give more irrigation licenses but to put order in the “uncontrolled proliferation” of farms that is depleting the aquifer. Scientists warn that you cannot close your eyes to reality and of a “general deterioration & rdquor; of the Park, with the loss of the lagoons, which affect all types of fauna (birds, amphibians, insects…) and the death of trees.
What will the Government of the nation do?
The Ministry for Ecological Transition has already made it clear that will go to the Constitutional Court. The bilateral dialogue between the Junta de Andalucía and the Government of the Nation is broken. There have been two meetings between the Minister of Sustainability and the Environment of the Junta de Andalucía, Ramón Fernández-Pacheco, and the Secretary of State for the Environment, Hugo Morán, which were held on December 28 and February 27. The Government asked that no initiative be registered but PP and Vox in the Andalusian Parliament went ahead. The Junta de Andalucía insists on reaching out to consensus and accuses the Government of not wanting to sit down.
What did the European Commission warn of by letter?
The European Commission sent a letter to the Permanent Embassy of Spain to the European Union to show its indignation for the new irrigation plan for Doñana registered by PP and Vox in the Andalusian Parliament. The letter, which announces sanctions and makes it clear that if that bill goes ahead, it will come again to the courts, is signed by the Director General for the Environment of the European Commission, Florika Fink-Hooijer.
“If the processing of this proposal prospers in the terms that have been announced, a flagrant violation of the provisions of the judgment of the Court of Justice. Given this situation, the Commission would take into consideration the adoption of all necessary measures, including the filing of a new appeal before the Court of Justice in which it would be requested that they be imposed pecuniary penalties”, pick up the letter.
The Minister for the Ecological Transition, Teresa Riberasent a note to the Andalusian president to send him the letter sent by the Commission “warning harshly against the new initiative that, in an incomprehensible wayis sponsoring” the regional Executive, he indicates. Ribera summons to “find a space of understanding as soon as possible” but there have been no contacts.
What do the May elections have to do with this new land regulation?
It is not the first time that the Andalusian Parliament has legislated on this matter. There was already a first bill that was registered in December 2021 and whose consideration was voted on in February 2022, with the abstention of the PSOE, which then faced the national government. That initiative declined when the Chamber was dissolved by the autonomous elections last June.
Now it resumes with the municipal elections in May conditioning the entire process. Huelva is a very sensitive area on the Andalusian political map. The PP dreams of winning the mayoralty of the capital from the PSOE and taking control of the Huelva Provincial Council. Everything that happens in the towns around Doñana, which have a difficult coexistence with the Natural Park, is essential before the municipal elections next May. Among the municipalities there are three socialist mayors and two independent ones (Almonte and Lucena del Puerto). The PP won in all of them in the past regional elections in June. In many towns in Huelva, in the general ones, Vox, which leads the way in the initiative and pressured the PP to present it again, ‘surpassed’ the popular ones. The rush for processing has to do with the municipal elections in May. PP and Vox promised to provide solutions in these towns and Moreno took him on his electoral program.
What are the alternatives?
Related news
The Government of the nation has deployed a plan of €356 million in five years (2027) to relieve the pressurewho suffers the Doñana national park at a critical moment, given the delicate situation that one of the main wetlands in Europe is going through, with the drought lashing and the agricultural and tourist activity of the area exerting a pressure that is already, say the experts, unbearable. Among the measures that the Minister and Third Vice President of the Government, Teresa Ribera, presented in Almonte (Huelva) is a game of €100 million destined to the purchase of water rights from the irrigators of the lands adjacent to the Park and from farms to put an end to intensive agricultural activity, especially strawberry and other red fruits. The Government of the nation announces that it has closed 220 illegal wells and plans to close another 496 in this legislature.
Is there a surplus of water with the transfer that is being carried out?
There is an eternal claim to the Government for the Transfer of Red, Piedras and Odiel. A transfer that after many years is already under construction but that will be used for a single purpose: to recover the good state of the groundwater mass of La Rocina, crucial for the survival of the Park. “Those assignments water resources& rdquor ;, points out the Guadalquivir Hydrographic Confederation, some 19.99 cubic hectometres, “will be limited to replacing irrigation with already accredited groundwater rights by surface water & rdquor; and “in no case may they be used for the creation of new irrigation systems& rdquor ;. The Junta de Andalucía denies that the water from this transfer is already distributed and asks that it be used for new rights for farmers.