No one has more rights than another over the forest on the mountain of Ansovell, in the municipality of Cava (Alt Urgell). This is what the court of first instance and investigation number 1 of La Seu d’Urgell ruled. The sentence, issued on July 3, partially upholds the lawsuit filed in 2018 by twenty descendants of the former owners against two brothers, the Planes Nequí -one already dead-, also heirs to the estate, who claimed a third and rejected that the same applies to all. The sentence, against which an appeal can be filed, says that M.R. Planes Nequí is neither the exclusive owner of a third of the property nor does it have more rights than the other co-owners.
The center of the litigation is Ansovell, one of the three centers that make up the municipality of Cava, where fewer than 30 people live permanently. The environment is bucolic, the inhabitants and visitors enjoy a lot of tranquility and spectacular views of 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 enclave section. Antònia is part of the group of heirs who defend that the forest belongs to everyone.
This chapter in the history of the mountain of Ansovell, which had belonged to the Duke of Híjar, dates back to the 19th century. A delegation of three residents of Ansovell and one from the nearby town of Arsèguel bought the useful domain of the forest for the benefit, use and benefit of the majority of the inhabitants of the town, specifically 42, according to the plaintiffs. But a private document dated March 20, 1854 that would certify this operation was lost, a fact that has made it difficult to demonstrate this ancient pact. However, they indicate that subsequently, on July 2, 1871, it was acknowledged in a public deed before the notary of La Seu d’Urgell that the aforementioned acquisition had been carried out for everyone, for the 42 inhabitants, and not only for three of the four people who had formalized the purchase. The fourth, Arsèguel, had sold her share in 1860.
Years passed and there were no problems. The few profits that the exploitation of the forest gave were distributed in equal parts and the payment of taxes was also dealt with 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’s a purely sentimental issue, of love for the mountains, it’s not an economic issue,” comments Jaume Ribes, lawyer for the plaintiffs.
Faced with the lack of property titles, “a domain file was initiated, a judicial procedure that previously allowed the situation to be regularized in the registry if it could be demonstrated that during the last three decades the descendants had acted as owners, but two people opposed it, the Planas Nequí brothers, and the case did not succeed, that’s why we filed the civil lawsuit, in September 2018, on behalf of twenty people and the bishopric of Urgell”, says the lawyer James Ribes
A little more than a month after the trial was held, the judgment handed down by the head of the civil section of court number 1 in La Seu indicates that, in the absence of documentary evidence, he considers it “doubtful” that the forest for the benefit of 42 residents, and not just the four listed as purchasers. But he understands that since the income from the forest has been divided among all 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 satisfied by the forest board, made up of the heirs of the 42 initial owners, an element in favor of the claimants’ thesis.
