Return to the starting box after a year. With the Doñana Park in the same critical state of biodiversity, the threats from the European Commission to fine Spain, the scientific reports against it, the complaints from ecologists and farmers themselves in the region, the warnings from European supermarket chains that exports and the government’s warning that it would go before the constitutional court for encroaching on its powers would decrease. The Andalusian right has reinstated its bill to increase irrigation together with Doñana – with small changes – and this Friday reactivated criticism from environmentalists, scientists and the Ministry of Ecological Transition.
Three months before the municipal elections, the Andalusian PP of Juan Manuel Moreno – who insists on his strong ecological conscience – together with the extreme right presented a law this Friday to enlarge the strawberry greenhouses next to the emblematic reserve. And the reaction to it was fierce: “The war drums against Doñana and legality return. Leave no doubt: we will resist any attack on this precious natural space,” said Vice President and Minister for Ecological Transition Teresa Ribera on Twitter.
The ministry does not rule out taking the law to the Constitutional Court for encroaching on powers, as it warned a year ago, recalling that Brussels has already warned that the Court of Justice of the EU was flouted by leaving the wetland unprotected . “The bill is a cheek (…) Increasing irrigation in these areas near the Doñana National Park would further damage an area already severely affected by drought,” criticized the government.
The language of war heralds another crude confrontation between the central government and the Andalusian government, while science and the European Commission warn of the damage to an already badly damaged reserve, with the same background scenario: a few months before the elections – now municipal, Autonomous for a year—, the right has put the electoral advantage of some 1,500 Huelva farmers, who today irrigate with illegal wells and whose farms are becoming irrigable, over the criticism they will face over environmental damage.
The Andalusian spokesman for the PP Group, Toni Martín, this Friday. Maria Jose Lopez (European Press)
The potential encroachment on powers stems from the fact that the board intends to legislate to guarantee that strawberry growers whose land is classified as irrigable have water, although the body that decides water rights is the ministry. The judiciary has already decided about thirty sentences to make it clear that the very previous plan from 2004, which should now be crushed, did not seep into power by asking the opinion of the ministry’s water engineers, who are now being ignored.
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The PP announces that its proposal “does not speak of Doñana or water, but only of territorial planning”. “Doñana is untouchable,” he says, assuring that the water resources do not come from the groundwater that feeds the national park, but from surface water. This requires a series of works that are the responsibility of the board and also of the state. “If there is a change of government after the December elections, it will accelerate,” predicted the President of the Huelva PP, explicitly acknowledging the electoral interest of the proposal. He also acknowledged that “as long as there is no surface water, nothing gets solved”.
For environmentalists, the law leaves Doñana vulnerable and thirsty in the dead of winter: “The process of amending the 2004 plan is sheer cowardice [de la corona forestal, denominado plan de la fresa] and reduce the sectoral reports because they would be negative. It is outrageous to make a single law for this,” criticizes Juan José Carmona, WWF coordinator for Doñana.
Also opposed to the plan is Eloy Revilla, director of the Doñana Biological Station (CSIC), which represents scientific knowledge about the reserve and its current precarious development. “The legalization of some illegal water uses creates a huge problem that only adds to the complexity. It’s a delusion for the farmers themselves, they talk about a water resource that doesn’t exist.” The question is how the information about water availability reaches the farmers in the area.
The key is that the bill replaces an action to regulate a specific area, which the Andalusian Board has always exercised through an administrative procedure. Through Parliament, the people and Vox avoid all the experts who would warn about the difficulty of justifying a change in soil in an area as stressed and mapped as the area around Doñana, where each hectare has a classification and a color on the map.
And above all, the popular parties, which govern with an absolute majority, evade the cascade of reports from the junta and others: the Doñana Participation Council, the opinions of the ministry and the area councils, their own environmental assessment study, reports from other ministries concerned, the time of the allegations , which farmers in the area affected by the new water rights could bring forward… In addition, the law is being processed urgently and can be passed before August.
The President of the Junta de Andalucía, Juan Manuel Moreno, this Thursday in Doñana. Julio Munoz (EFE)
The right defends that the current plan differs from that of 2022 because it would no longer give groundwater to farmers who work illegally today with non-irrigable soil, but would rather be shallow and respect the overexploited aquifer. The law will turn the new farms into “preferred” land, and farmers who are currently illegal could have priority over others with water rights, but the tap is now cut off because of drought. “For the rest of us, this is killing us,” laments one of them, who asked not to be identified.
PP and Vox present the text without cartography so as not to indicate in advance which farms would benefit from the measure and have eliminated the number of hectares that could benefit, as in the proposal registered in the last legislature, but they give admit that it is about 1,600 hectares, according to confirmed by the parliamentary speaker of the PP, Toni Martín, and the president of the PP of Huelva and deputy, Manuel Andrés González. The proposal provides for the establishment of a technical office to assess “on a case-by-case basis” whether the land can be considered irrigable. If given the green light, “they will be able to claim water from the Guadalquivir Hydrographic Confederation, over which the board has no jurisdiction.” Sources from the Department for Sustainability, Environment and Blue Economy acknowledge that it is “a political issue”. This Friday, Councilor Ramón Fernández-Pacheco had planned to attend a kissing ceremony for the image of Jesús Cautivo de Medinaceli in Almería, but he canceled it at the last minute.
The Guadalquivir Hydrographic Confederation, dependent on the ecological transition, often repeats that there is no more water to distribute, a reality reflected in its hydrological plan, valid until 2028, which denies the possibility that more farmers knock on his door and seek water for heavily irrigated crops.
The technical bureau is one of the PSOE’s demands that the people included in the text, although the socialists deny having agreed anything with the PP. The Ministry for Ecological Transition does not feel involved in the proposal either. The two meetings that Minister Fernández-Pacheco held with Secretary of State for the Environment Hugo Morán ended without agreement after the latter unsuccessfully requested his resignation.
The swamp of Doñana, last November. / PACO BRIDGES
The popular assure that they have taken up the Ministry’s request for the forest law. “We did a cut and paste,” says González. The Board also held a meeting with Biodiversity Director Humberto Delgado on February 8 in Brussels, attended by Deputy Minister Sergio Arjona and Director General for Protected Areas José Enrique Borrallo.
In a statement, the PSOE accused the President of the Junta, Juan Manuel Moreno, of “hiding behind his faction and taking no responsibility” for the irrigation in Doñana. The Socialists claim that it is the regional government that is presenting a draft law that requires a series of mandatory reports and the positive opinion of the Doñana Participation Council, in which all the sectors concerned are represented. They also call for “the establishment of a bilateral commission or technical table with the Spanish government, which also has powers on the water issue, which is key”.
In the face of this repeated panorama, it remains to be seen how the European Commission will react, which a year ago warned Spain of new fines for violating the judgment of the Court of Justice of the EU, which obliged it to protect Doñana so that biodiversity could recover and see that the direction of Andalusia was the opposite.
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