There is a consensus that the purest swamp in Doñana is the swamp of Hinojos, a small town of Huelva with a population of 4,000 that has owned these lands from King Alfonso to the city council of Hinojoro. A legal battle – which seems long and not devoid of political interests, as we witnessed this week in the Andalusian Parliament – is the second they are waging against the central government, in which they were previously beaten in 1961, during the dictatorship of Francisco Franco.
We are talking about about 8,500 hectares of swamps, which represents about 25% of the area of the municipality of Hinojos. The expropriation process preserves the public nature of these lands, but they are now under the direct administration of the central executive and not the municipality, as has been the case for nearly eight centuries. Indeed, the Hinojiro City Council has emotional reasons to oppose this demarcation, but it is not the only one, as the majority of actors in Doñana reject a measure that implies removing this area from being considered a freshwater swamp, contrary to what all scientific studies have confirmed for decades.
The largest part of this area is the so-called Maresma Gallega, which also extends to the areas of Almonte (Helva) and Aznalcázar (Seville). It happens to be the heart of the park itself, the purest doña that has remained, as much as possible, unchanged over time. It is a large area that can only accommodate 850 heads of livestock, most of them local breeds: Maresmina mares, Mostrenka cows and Liberjana Chora sheep, the latter of which are critically endangered.
The first round was won
“I live for the swamp, it is my life,” says Manuel Naranjo, of the Hinojos livestock cooperative and former mayor of the town of Ayo, who knows by heart some of the fields that represent his own mountains and who at that time obtained these royal lands in exchange for the help given to Alfonso by the locals. Shortly before, Hinojos had been incorporated into the Kingdom of Seville, which depended on its council until the 19th century.
Naranjo himself recalls that the lawsuit now filed – a controversial administrative appeal has already been filed – is the second battle against the state, after the one won in 1961. Although these marshes had belonged to the town since the 13th century, they were not registered until 1957 when the then mayor (Leonardo Mateo Gonzalez) registered them in the cadastre in the name of the town, claiming that they had long belonged as physical property. Abyssal to your city hall.
At that time, the state granted part of the original area of 10,800 hectares to individuals to implement projects aimed mainly at draining and reclaiming it for agricultural production. A threat that certainly resurfaced at the end of the 1970s with the Almonte-Marismas Plan, which sought to create 14,000 hectares of irrigated land in the region.
In fact, the state expropriated 1,817 hectares of its swamps from Hinojos in 1974, land it effectively retained despite the project not going ahead. But the truth is that we are in the late 1950s and the Franco government is claiming these lands as state lands, a claim it lost because it was already registered as a municipality and this was ratified in 1962 by a second ruling, in this case by the Seville court.
You lose one way or another
Now things have become more complicated, because the city council is filing a lawsuit to defend that its swamp is a flowing river (fresh water) and not tidal, in order to circumvent this demarcation of the terrestrial public maritime domain. But even if it succeeds, the law has required this procedure for decades and, in any case, it would move to the demarcation of the public water domain, which ultimately means, in practice, that a large number of hectares will not be in the hands of municipalities even if they maintain their public character. But expectations indicate that the sting will not be so brutal.
Even government organizations, such as the Doñana Biological Station, have appealed against the demarcation, the Andalusian Council has taken the case to court, and the Natural Space Participation Council itself has largely expressed its opposition to the project. The president of this organization, Enrique Mateus, recently sent an official complaint to the Ministry of Ecological Transition (Miteco) because the decision was taken without the mandatory prior consultation of this forum in which all actors of the natural field are present.
The Aznalcazar City Council, governed by the Socialist Workers Party, also opposes the decision of the central executive, but in the case of Hinojos, a deep sense of ownership and ancestral ties is combined with the fact that the mayor, Joaquina del Valle Ortega, is from the People’s Party and will clash with the central government. This helps make it the most aggressive against the state’s decision, which it considers “abnormal and arbitrary,” as well as “insulting” the Andalusians against the Catalans.
How did we get to this point where Catalonia appears through the Huelva Swamp? Well, because the demarcation of the Ebro Delta also raised dust, prompting Mitiko to let the file expire on the grounds that there was not enough consensus. There were voices calling for the same to be done in Doñana given the almost unanimous vote against it, but the government decided to go ahead and made it official at the Bank of England on the day the Participation Board met to address the issue. This didn’t exactly help calm things down.
Political strikes
Therefore, this story has political dimensions that the People’s Party is trying to benefit from, and it is the one that submitted initiatives in Congress, the Senate, and the Andalusian Parliament demanding the cancellation of the decision. In Hinojos, where the local government is promoting the collection of signatures, opposition is strong, as evidenced by the fact that even PSOE council members attended the mass demonstration called a week ago to demand the abolition of demarcation, a protest attended by several PP leaders.
“Generation after generation, Hinojos families have known how to coexist with the marshes, knowing their rhythm, respecting their cycles, and transmitting a model of use that does not destroy, but rather preserves and strengthens,” the city mayor defended at a recent event, showcasing the “marsh culture that defines our identity.” “It is the only virgin area preserved for eight centuries,” he added, while Manuel Naranjo emphasizes the enormous value of this place because “the swamp is very rich, and Doñana is both water and swamp.”
Naturally, it must be taken into account that the Coastal Law of 1988 itself, which requires this demarcation, stipulates in its Article 13 that owners of lands integrated into the public maritime domain will acquire the right of occupation and use for a period of 75 years “with respect to existing uses and uses” and without the obligation to pay fees. This means that at least during this time it is protected for things to continue as they were before.
The final decision is now in the hands of the disputed administrative courts and appeals to the Ministry itself, opening the door to trying to smooth things over with the reminder that nearly one hundred percent of the demarcations that were eliminated were later confirmed by the national court. It remains to be seen what will happen in this second battle between Hinojos and the state over these territories, which is in fact the third: when the current districts were created in the nineteenth century, the municipal district of Hinojos (like the district of Almonte) was divided between Huelva and Seville, with the swampy areas allocated to the latter. That battle, in the end, was also won by Hinojos…