Spain’s environment minister has accused the Andalucían regional government of engaging in “short-term electoral demagoguery” and playing into the hands of the far right by pressing ahead with irrigation plans for strawberry farms that could threaten the survival of one of Europe’s most important wetlands.
Water supplies to the Doñana Natural Space, whose marshes, forests and dunes extend across almost 130,000 hectares (320,000 acres) and include a Unesco-listed national park, have declined drastically over the past 30 years because of climate breakdown, farming, mining pollution and marsh drainage.
Last week, however, the regional government shrugged off such concerns – as well as warnings from Unesco and the European Commission – and began fast-tracking a new law that will increase the amount of irrigable land around Doñana by 800 hectares. The legislation, proposed by the ruling conservative People’s party (PP) and the far-right Vox party, will also serve as an amnesty to the strawberry farmers who have already sunk illegal wells there.
Spain’s environment minister, Teresa Ribera, has described the move as damaging, disingenuous and divisive. “I think it’s a dangerous decision because there’s never going to be extra water there,” she said.
“It generates expectations and poses a difficult threat to the area. Doñana is a nature sanctuary that is under many pressures … The last thing we need is for new pressures to emerge.”
Environmental groups have long campaigned to protect the area, which sustains millions of migrating birds and is also home to a major population of endangered Iberian lynxes, pointing out that the illegal wells sunk to feed the region’s numerous soft fruit farms are stressing the aquifer.
Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla, the PP president of the region, says “regularising” the land is the only way to help the hundreds of farmers currently working the land illegally. He has also previously vowed that Andalucía’s “natural jewels” will not be eroded “by as much as a millimetre”.
A recent report from Spain’s national research council noted that 59% of Doñana’s large lakes hadn’t been full since at least 2013, and that the area was in “critical condition”. Doñana’s largest permanent lake dried up last year for the third time in half a century, shrinking to a small puddle.
Ribera, who is also one of Spain’s three deputy prime ministers, said she believed the proposed law had more to do with May’s local elections – in which the PP is keen not to cede any seats to Vox – than with coherent policymaking.
“I think it’s short-term electoral demagoguery. I think [regional government] is coming under a lot of pressure from the far right, from Vox, who want to tub-thump to capitalise on the fears of the local population.”
Ribera said the PP’s desire to compete with Vox for what she termed “the fear vote” would only give people false hope, and harm both the environment and Spanish democracy.
“We need to be honest,” she said. “I’ve seen that some social groups have compared this to the demagoguery of Bolsonaro and Trump, and I think that’s right. We shouldn’t allow a degradation of our democratic system or our institutional system by keeping quiet in the face of such serious attacks.”
She said the central government would take the matter to the constitutional court if the Andalucían authorities failed to drop the plan, and appealed to Moreno Bonilla to stop peddling “a mirage” and to focus instead on plans to diversify the local economy.
“The regional government hasn’t been serious when it comes to finding alternatives and to diversifying and generating something that offers stable and enduring answers,” she said.
Ribera also said the decision would not only harm Doñana, but could also damage those growing soft fruit legally as it could provoke a consumer-led backlash: “They could be affected by seller boycotts of strawberries from Doñana or from Huelva.
“That would mean money would have to be invested in traceability to differentiate between what’s legal and what isn’t; between who’s using water legally and who isn’t. I think it’s a very big miscalculation on the part of the regional government and I think that it’s a simplistic reading of the situation.”
Carlos Dávila, head of the Doñana office of the environmental NGO SEO/BirdLife, has accused the PP of risking the future of the area “for a handful of votes”.
“It’s worth remembering that what we’re talking about here is an area that, like the Alhambra in Granada, is a world heritage site,” he said. “The law the Andalucían government is proposing would be like knocking down a big chunk of the Alhambra to put up a shopping centre.”
Greenpeace Spain has described the law as “an insult to science” and warned that “our country’s most emblematic park – and one of the most important in terms of Europe and Africa’s biodiversity – could disappear as we know it”.
Maribel Mora, a leftwing opposition MP, was reprimanded earlier this week after pouring sand on Moreno Bonilla’s empty seat in the Andalucían parliament to show that his plans could turn Doñana into a desert.
Both the European Commission and Unesco are keeping a close eye on the situation and have said Spain could face penalties for failing to safeguard Doñana.
The European court of justice ruled in 2021 that Spain had not fulfilled its obligations on preventing illegal water extraction around Doñana and had failed to take the measures needed to stop “significant alterations” to its protected habitats.
The European Commission has said it is “deeply worried” at the possible impacts of the proposed changes and has not ruled out taking Spain to the court of justice again. Unesco has previously said the situation could jeopardise Doñana’s world heritage status.
