It was 1991 and the European Commission warned the Junta d’Andalusia that it could lose European funds if it did not limit the excessive use of the aquifers that feed the Doñana marshes. Does that sound familiar, reader? International organizations protecting the environment were added to the request. Why is Doñana so important? Because, among many other things, it is the nesting place of migratory birds that fly between Africa and Europe, so if the marshes were to dry up, there would be a hecatomb among these birds, with chain consequences for the ecosystem european
Given the seriousness of the threat, the then president Manuel Chaves, supported by Felipe González, proposed creating a committee of experts whose opinion would be binding. This is how the committee for the sustainable development of the Doñana environment was created. To ensure its neutrality, the Commission appointed two of its officials and negotiated that the chairman of the committee should be a person of consensus between the Commission and the Board. They chose me because, as a professor of Regional Development at Berkeley, I was outside the pressures of the Board.
I accepted with conditions: total independence and absolute confidentiality for twelve months. And so it was. I appointed ten eminent academics, most of them from Andalusia, geologists, biologists, geographers and economists. We diagnosed where the water withdrawal was coming from. We recommended measures to correct the excesses. And we proposed to encourage sustainable economic activities with funding from the European Commission.
The problem was not so much the urbanization of Matalascañas, but the multiple illegal wells for the cultivation of strawberries. Closing all those wells solved the problem. And that’s what we recommended. And we proposed a sustainable development based on ecotourism and related activities such as the training of ecological guides, the organization of congresses, the Doñana brand beekeeping, the modernization of the infrastructure of the surrounding municipalities…
We quantified the creation of 150,000 jobs in a decade. The plan received wide national and international approval and the Commission granted 600 million euros for its implementation, on the condition that it be implemented. Unesco added protection by declaring Doñana a World Heritage Site in 1994.
But a political and media storm was unleashed, with the mayors of the area protesting and even some energy workers organizing stampedes of their cows to destroy the park. I received multiple pressures, including from a supposed emissary of the Royal House (or so he said), who asked me to accommodate a luxury hotel with an eco-friendly golf course. Some municipalities declared me persona non grata.
Thus began a long tug-of-war that, when it seemed under control in 2014, is now unraveling because the Andalusian right is back as the masters of the cortijo defending friends. And it is that Doñana is a symbol of the demagogic discourse of opposing development and sustainability, mobilizing the poor in defense of the speculation of the rich. For this we will have to fight again.
