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Neither the devastating complaint by the scientists about Doñana, nor the notice from the European Commission of a fine for Spain, nor the warning from the central government to go to the Constitutional Court for invasion of powers have prevented the Andalusian Parliament, by a vast majority (72 votes of the PP and Vox out of a total of 109), approved this Wednesday the consideration of the bill to increase irrigation in the surroundings of the valuable nature reserve. The initiative now begins its parliamentary journey and it will do so at full speed, by way of urgency, which cuts the deadlines in half. Before the deputies are holiday fairy tales in August could come into effect.
In the midst of a drought, with the aquifer at its lowest levels in decades and the reservoirs at only 25% of their capacity, the bill will reclassify as irrigable the farms of some farmers who use historical records. These were left out of regulation when in 2014, by decree, the so-called strawberry plan was advanced and agreed, the Special Plan for Irrigation Management of the County of Huelva that affected five municipalities (Almonte, Bonares, Lucena del Puerto, Moguer and Rociana del Condado). How many hectares will be affected? Not even the PP knows.
During the fierce parliamentary debate, which was followed from the rostrum by representatives of some agricultural sectors, the popular spokesman and president of the Huelva PP, Manuel Andrés González, defended the initiative because “the future of hundreds of families is at stake.” According to him, the bill “does not cross red lines with Doñana”, “safeguards environmental protection and makes it compatible” with agricultural activity. Vox spokesman Rafael Segovia proclaimed his “love for Doñana” and maintained that in Huelva “there is water.”
The mixed group-Adelante Andalucía, Por Andalucía and the PSOE voted against the bill, which changed their abstention from the last legislature to no.
In the last legislature, the Popular Party and Vox in another similar proposal, which declined when elections were called, spoke of some 1,500 hectares. That figure has disappeared from the current text. The PP made a volley of the data that “600 families” would benefit, although it now acknowledges that the estimates “are hypothetical.” In a letter sent by the Junta de Andalucía to the European Commission in February 2022, it is precisely detailed that the regularized hectares would amount to 748.62.
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Whether many or few, the reality is that the Andalusian Parliament intends to expand the irrigable agricultural areas without knowing where the water is going to come from. Aquifer 27, which feeds Doñana, is not only overexploited, but is also not within the scope of the Board’s powers, since the provision of water depends on the Guadalquivir Hydrographic Confederation, linked to the Ministry for Ecological Transition . He promises that they will be irrigated with surface water, but these depend on the undertaking of a series of hydraulic works, planned by the central government, and whose completion date no one gives. But it is also that in the plan for the transfer of the Tinto, Odiel and Piedras rivers it is established that 19.9 cubic hectometres can be transferred to irrigable areas that already have administrative concessions and so long as that basin is in surplus. “It is the day of the homeland and of agriculture in the farmer,” said the general secretary of the Andalusian PSOE, Juan Espadas, before the debate.
If there is no water, neither underground nor on the surface, if the scientists of the Doñana CSIC Biological Station denounce the “unsustainable critical point” that the reserve is going through due to the “executive inaction” of politicians, what is the point of this proposal? The biologist Miguel Delibes de Castro, President of the Doñana Participation Council, criticizes: “The law has no route, the Constitutional or the European Commission will stop it. But while we won partial battles such as the highway that crossed the park or the dredging of the Guadalquivir, Doñana is losing the war because we did not eliminate the underlying problem”.
Electoral greed is apparently what moves the PP and Vox to defend the bill, although the results of only five municipalities out of a total of 80 in the entire province are at stake. The government of the Diputación de Huelva is one of the objectives of the popular for the municipal elections on May 28, although the deputies that are at stake in those five towns are not decisive, according to the Socialists who govern in the provincial body. and in 75% of the Huelva municipalities. 40% of the province of Huelva has some type of environmental protection.
This morning, the president of the Junta, Juan Manuel Moreno, also alluded to the farmers and potential voters, who reproached the central government for attacking his party’s proposed law after years without having acted in the natural park. “Not once has the Government of Spain called us and now it has a province on fire, all the farmers on fire. A park does not defend itself with positions against its neighbors”, he pointed out to affirm that he does not fear any sanction from Brussels: “We are going to explain things to them correctly so that they do not fall for the falsehoods that are spreading from the Government of Spain”. The popular leader has continued to lash out at the Executive branch, calling its attitude “enormous frivolity”, “now, when we come to put a solution to clogging the subsoil, with a full stop law so that irrigation is not expanded, to put order in the chaos they have created for years.” “It is an enormous frivolity that those who have allowed the aquifers to be violated come to defend Doñana, the Guadalquivir Hydrographic Confederation, which is the one who has the competition,” he insisted.
The debate this Wednesday has not been spared from a funny episode. The spokeswoman for Adelante Andalucía, Maribel Mora, poured Doñana sand into a jar on the seat, currently empty, the president of the Junta, Juan Manuel Moreno. The President of Parliament, Jesús Aguirre, jumped like a resort.
—It’s very wrong, it’s a lack of education! A little favor, of dignity! I call you to order. If you want to turn heads, zip up a jumpsuit.
“Well, very well,” replied the deputy, who continued her intervention as if nothing had happened.
Mora assures that the PP and Vox proposal is a “parliamentary shame and is plagued with lies, dries up Doñana and turns dry land into irrigation.” The spokesperson for Por Andalucía, Inma Nieto, explained that the initiative “is not going anywhere because there is no water” and, in her opinion, it endangers the red fruit business in Europe due to doubts about the traceability of the product. water use. Nieto accused the PP of being “arsonists of politics and deniers of science for a handful of votes.”
Mario Jiménez, of the PSOE, blames the Andalusian president, Juan Manuel Moreno, for being responsible “for this immense farce” and for “using anguished farmers because he only wants their votes.” Without results, the PSOE admits that there is “a real problem” in the Doñana region. “There are farmers who may have legitimate historical rights and we have an obligation to seek solutions in a sensible way,” he said. The Socialists propose – and this is also included in the PP and Vox bill – that a technical commission be created to review each demand on a case-by-case basis.
The Socialists and also Por Andalucía are open to the innification of farmers with water rights. The purchase of land is provided for in the shock plan presented by the third vice president and minister for Ecological Transition, Teresa Ribera, in November 2022 in Almonte to save Doñana from its growing decline. Of the 356 million euros planned to preserve the reserve, the Government allocates 100 million to buy farms with water rights whose owners are willing to sell. The Government can buy an entire farm, rainfed or irrigated, or acquire only the water rights to change the use of the land from irrigated to rainfed, or it could also exchange the land for others in the Guadalquivir basin.
It was used in 2015, together with the Guadalquivir Hydrographic Confederation, which acquired 1,000 hectares of the Los Mimbrales farm for 35 million euros, in the municipality of Almonte (Huelva).
To change the ownership of the farms that today are irrigated with illegal wells, the Andalusian PP chose a bill instead of an administrative procedure by the Board, which would have had scientific and technical reports from its ministries to endorse or rule out the change to irrigable soils. Despite having chosen the parliamentary path that excludes the reports of experts from the Doñana Participation Council, the spokesman for the Board and Sustainability Minister, Ramón Fernández-Pacheco, confirmed this Wednesday that he was open to hearing “better”. “Today no law is approved. Today it is taken into consideration to start the parliamentary process, we recommend that proposals and improvements be presented ”, he said.
In this regard, from Córdoba, the president of the Guadalquivir Hydrographic Confederation, Joaquín Páez, has charged the Board for not having presented “not even a technical report” that endorses the law. “It’s all due to the tacticism of Moreno, who has forgotten his supposed green revolution that he bragged about and the supposed water legislature.”
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