The last unfixed autonomous border is in the heart of depopulated Spain. For more than a century, Albarracín (Teruel) and Cuenca have disputed the limit of their respective municipal areas on public utility mountain number 12, known, not by chance, as El Entredicho. The Cuenca City Council maintains that the provincial border runs along the bed of the Tagus River, which rises in its vicinity and crosses the promontory; the man from Teruel, that those more than 2,000 hectares in dispute are his property and that, therefore, it belongs to him administratively even though they are beyond the river course. Now, a recent resolution from the National Geographic Institute (IGN) has come to endorse the Aragonese thesis, thus bringing closer the resolution of a conflict that, in turn, affects the boundaries between the communities of Aragon and Castilla-La Mancha.
The mayor of Albarracín, David Úbeda, is satisfied with a ruling that supports his historical claim. “Until now the mountain was divided in half and not by the outer limit. But the resolution establishes that the limit is not marked by the geographical feature of the Tagus River, but rather the criteria of the management and exploitation that we have carried out for decades must prevail,” he says by phone.
According to him, his people have always exercised competence and jurisdiction over that land without opposition from Cuenca. “Ownership of the mountain has never been in dispute,” he emphasizes. With an area of ??about 2,000 hectares, all forestry exploitation, whether wood, hunting, beekeeping, pasture or mycology, has historically been carried out by Albarracín, while the Government of Aragon has been responsible for the repair of its roads. “The dispute is a question of municipal boundaries, history and territory,” he adds.
The documentary records certify that the genesis of the disagreement dates back to the end of the 19th century, when representatives of the two provinces tried without success to establish the interprovincial border which, in this case, also marks the limit between the two communities. Since then, there have been some specific agreements regarding the delimitation points between both municipalities, but without finding a solution to the discrepancy over El Entredicho.
Finally, in 2022 they agreed to the participation of the IGN to resolve the demarcation without moving from their positions: the Castilian-Manchegos, that the Tagus mark the division; the Aragonese, that the ownership and management of the mountain be prioritized. In its recent resolution, the IGN justifies that, in accordance with the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court and the opinions of the Council of State, the jurisdictional limit line must coincide with the one proposed by the Aragonese party “having been able to demonstrate the exercise of jurisdiction over the lands in dispute without contestation by the municipality of Cuenca.”
It is a point in favor of the people from Teruel, but the match is still far from being resolved. The IGN’s decision did not please the Cuenca city council, which unanimously approved to appeal this resolution. “We will fight so that the delimitation is the Tagus,” said its mayor, the socialist Darío Dolz, during the plenary session in which they addressed the issue.
In addition to its appeal, the investigating body that commissioned the technical report from the IGN, the General Directorate of Autonomous and Local Legal Regime of the Ministry of Territorial Policy, has also requested an opinion, this time of a legal nature, from the Council of State. With the two documents in hand, said General Directorate will issue an administrative resolution that, in the event of disagreement, may be appealed by the parties before the Administrative Litigation Court, so the process could still take years.
Faced with this situation, the Teruel councilor assures that he respects Cuenca’s position, although he considers that the only effect of this appeal will be to extend the deadlines. For their part, IGN sources themselves told this newspaper that their report is “mandatory, but not binding,” and that it is the Ministry of Territorial Policy that writes the resolution. “Although it is true that in practice it resolves based on our report, it does not have to do so,” they point out.
It is not a new situation for them. As the public body recalls, in the past they also had to deal with similar conflicts that affected two communities, such as those that pitted Agoncillo (La Rioja) against Mendavia (Navarra), Castro Urdiales (Cantabria) and Muskiz (Basque Country). , San Pedro del Pinatar (Murcia) with Pilar de la Horadada (Alicante) or, the most recent, between Somiedo (Asturias) and Cabrillanes (León), “which is appealed before the National Court awaiting sentencing.” The one in Albarracín and Cuenca could be the last. “Right now, the IGN does not participate in any other demarcation file between municipal terms belonging to different autonomous communities,” they say.