No one has more rights than another over the Ansovell mountain forest, in the municipality of Cava (Alt Urgell). This has been ruled by the Court of First Instance and Instruction number 1 of the Seu d’Urgell. The sentence, issued on July 3, partially upholds the lawsuit filed in 2018 by some twenty descendants of the former owners against two brothers, the Planas Nequí -one already deceased-, also heirs to the estate, who claimed a third of the same rejecting that the same corresponds to all. The sentence, against which an appeal can be made, says that M.R. Planas Nequí is not the exclusive owner of a third part of the farm, nor does it hold a greater or different right over it than the rest of the co-owners.
The center of the dispute is Ansovell, one of the three nuclei that make up the municipality of Cava, where less than 30 people reside permanently. The environment is bucolic, the inhabitants and visitors enjoy a lot of tranquility and spectacular views of the Cadí. Antònia and her husband, Francesc, returned to Ansovell after retirement; They are one of the few remaining witnesses of what life was like in the past in this secluded enclave. Antònia is part of the group of heirs who defend that the forest belongs to everyone.
This chapter in the history of the Ansovell mountain, which had belonged to the Duke of Híjar, dates back to the 19th century. A delegation of three Ansovell residents and one from the nearby town of Arsèguel bought the useful domain of the forest for the benefit, use and exploitation of the majority of the town’s inhabitants, specifically 42, according to the plaintiffs. But a private document dated March 20, 1854 that would prove this operation was lost, which has made it difficult to prove this ancient pact. However, they indicate that later, on July 2, 1871, it had been acknowledged in a public deed before the notary of La Seu d’Urgell that said acquisition had been made for all, for the 42 inhabitants, and not just for three of the four people who had formalized the purchase. The fourth, that of Arsèguel, had sold its part in 1860.
Years passed and there were no problems. The few benefits that the exploitation of the forest gave were shared equally and the payment of taxes was also shared in a common way. The people who continued to reside in Ansovell, fewer and fewer, considered that the word was enough. “The forest gives very little, it is a purely sentimental matter, of esteem for the mountain, it is not an economic issue,” says Jaume Ribes, lawyer for the plaintiffs.
Given the lack of property titles, “a domain file was initiated, a judicial procedure that previously allowed the situation in the registry to be regularized if it could be demonstrated that during the last three decades the descendants had acted as owners, but two people opposed , the Planas Nequí brothers, and the case did not prosper, that is why we filed the civil lawsuit, in September 2018, on behalf of about twenty people and the Bishopric of Urgell ”, says lawyer Jaume Ribes.
A little over a month after the trial was held, the sentence handed down by the head of the civil section of court number 1 of La Seu indicates that in the absence of documentary evidence he considers it “doubtful” that the forest was acquired for the benefit of 42 neighbors, and not only the four listed as purchasers. But he understands that since the income from the forest has been divided among all the co-owners since at least 1939, the mountain must be divided equally. Likewise, the territorial contributions of 1946, 1955, 1956, 1957, 1958 and 1976 or the IBI from 1991 to 1994 were paid by the forest board, made up of the heirs of the 42 initial owners, an element in favor of the thesis of the plaintiffs.
