The bird observatory, lonely and under a relentless sun, looks out over a plain turned into a brownish-brown parchment this Tuesday. Not a drop of water. It is the largest tablazo, the largest lagoon of those that make up the wetland of the Las Tablas de Daimiel National Park (Ciudad Real) and the heart of the protected area. A sure sign to the locals that the rest is dry. Barely 115 hectares are artificially flooded ―with the emergency wells and a small shipment from the Tajo-Segura transfer―, 7% of the 1,750 hectares of the La Mancha river table system, which in spring should be transformed into an amazing plain full of water in full Mancha. The data give the measure of the environmental disaster faced by this practically unique wetland in Europe and a key point in the movement of migratory birds.
The Administration ignored Daimiel’s alarm signals, which have been reproduced in other aquatic spaces such as the Doñana National Park, where hundreds of lagoons have already been lost. The overexploitation of the aquifers on which they depend, mainly due to the strong demand for water from agricultural exploitations, has been joined by an implacable drought, which in Daimiel is facing its ninth year with a decrease in rainfall of 25% on average per year. If it is seasoned with climate change, the future prospects for recovery are further darkened. Despite the eviction situation, nature resists as best it can and the few waterfowl that have arrived settle in the reduced stretch of water. If the water were to arrive, the spores of the eggs (a type of algae) that remain in the dry soil would revive.
“Not even Doñana, which is the star of biodiversity, is saved. If its marshes and lagoons are disappearing, imagine the rest,” says Santos Cirujano, a CSIC scientist and specialist in continental wetlands. Systematic mistreatment has caused the disappearance of 60% of the wetlands in Spain in the last century. “The process is repeated over and over again,” Cirujano explains. The beginning of the decline of the wetlands began at the beginning of the last century, with the 1918 law for the drying up of lagoons, marshes and swampy land, which were considered unhealthy places and sources of infections such as malaria. Jewels such as La Janda (Cádiz), Antela (Ourense) or Laguna de la Nava (Palencia), the largest and most emblematic inland lagoons, were lost there. But it was from the seventies, with the intensification of agriculture, when the decrease in groundwater and surface water was observed.
Another consequence is pollution from the arrival of agricultural fertilizers and poor water purification and industrial discharges. “The waters are eutrophied [exceso de nutrientes, sobre todo nitrógeno y fósforo]as has happened in the Mar Menor, where there have been terrible episodes of fish mortality due to lack of oxygen”, recalls Santos.
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The situation is such that “practically all the emblematic spaces identified in Spain as sites with serious conservation problems are wetland ecosystems”, indicates the Strategic Plan for Wetlands to 2030 of the Ministry for Ecological Transition. They estimate that there are at least 2,000 wetlands, many of them small. On the positive side, the document shows the increase in social awareness and the restoration work that has recovered 18,000 hectares of humid territory from 1991 to 2017.
Farmers are no strangers to the problem. Jesús Pozuelo, 75 years old, has been a member of the Board of Trustees of Las Tablas de Daimiel representing agricultural organizations since 1984. He began in the profession at the age of 12 and now cultivates 150 hectares of cereals and legumes (rainfed) and 40 hectares of irrigated vineyard. Flanked by a field of wheat, green but stunted at this point in the season due to the lack of rain, and by an immense field of vines, he is emphatic with the “rustlers of the water”. “For those who are caught without permission, have the wells closed, nothing of a sanction, it is the only way to be exemplary.” In the Alto Guadiana region ―where Las Tablas de Daimiel is located― there are 73,000 wells, of which 1,000 are illegal, reports the Guadiana Hydrographic Confederation (CHG). In total, 300,000 hectares are irrigated in the area. Since 2018, the CHG has shut down 267 drilling rigs that irrigated 5,686 hectares without permission.
In Andalusia, a bill promoted by the PP and Vox aims to regularize around a thousand illegal irrigated hectares in the area of Doñana. The president of the PP of Castilla-La Mancha, Paco Núñez, applauded this proposal on Saturday in an act together with the Andalusian president, Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla. “What you are doing in Doñana is keeping your word, thinking about Andalusian farmers, working for water to be an element of progress and avoiding wars that go nowhere. That’s what I want to do in Castilla-La Mancha ”, he told her. “That is the path, to regularize situations in an irregular situation and work on a national water agreement”, he added.
Pozuelo has given up Las Tablas in dark times, such as in 1994, when the aquifer, which occupies an area of 5,500 square meters, reached the lowest level since it has been monitored. It was the year in which it was officially declared overexploited, a category that it has never managed to leave behind. “But miraculously, it started to rain and it went up 20 meters, and when the water comes you relax,” he explains. But, as time passed and nothing has changed, Pozuelo considers, at the foot of the empty Guadiana riverbed, that “you cannot kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. We have to reduce consumption”. One solution, he points out, would be to encourage rainfed crops.
Reality rules and in the basins of the Las Tablas de Daimiel lagoons, vegetation typical of fallows (fields not sown for one or more years) of the surrounding crops and taray, a fast-growing tree, appear. To prevent their proliferation, at various points in the park they are cleared to prevent them from colonizing the lagoons. It is the transformation of an aquatic ecosystem into a terrestrial ecosystem, which in its disappearance drags a wetland of international importance.
In Doñana the process of loss of the lagoons is similar. First the meadow appears, then the reeds and finally the terrestrial vegetation: jaguars, heather or pines. It does not happen from one day to the next, because the system is used to the unpredictability of the rains. The problem, in both national parks, is that the aquifer does not have time to recover to overcome dry periods like the current one. The one in Daimiel has been shrinking since 2014 at an average of one meter per year, says Miguel Mejías, a researcher at the Geological Mining Institute (CN IGME-CSIC) and responsible for the control of aquifer levels for more than 25 years. The problem, he recalls, is the complete disconnect that exists between groundwater and surface water, which makes these tables dependent on the extraordinary avenues of rainfall that are increasingly unpredictable due to climate change. “For many years there have been no natural contributions to the wetland and the objectives of the Water Framework Directive have not been met.” Nor is the master plan for the park, which provides for a minimum flood target of 1,400 hectares at the beginning of spring and 600 at the end of summer.
Las Tablas de Daimiel arose historically from the overflow of the Guadiana rivers, in the Ojos del Guadiana where it is born by outcropping of the aquifer, and Cigüela. In the natural system, the water begins to gush out forming small puddles. Due to the low slope of the area, an extensive flood plain was generated. The last time it happened, to a lesser extent, was as a result of the exceptional wet period that the area experienced between 2010 and 2013.
The transfer from the Tagus ―established in the master plan of the park― is considered as one of the options to alleviate the situation. But there is disagreement. The Vice President and Minister for Ecological Transition, Teresa Ribera, declared in March that “the transfers to Las Tablas de Daimiel must be something exceptional” and that natural hydrological restoration must be promoted. A position similar to that of environmental associations. Alberto Fernández, from WWF, considers that a wetland cannot be maintained as an artificial pond. An exhaustive investigation by the NGO published in 2021 indicates that in Daimiel, Doñana, Mar Menor and Arenales, 88,000 hectares are illegally irrigated. Miguel Hernández, from Ecologistas en Acción, adds: “Bringing water from deficient sources is not the correct solution, because the adoption of solutions is postponed and environmental damage is produced in both basins.”
In the Junta de Castilla-La Mancha they remember that the park is the responsibility of the State. “What managers have to do is what the master plan for the protected area says [el trasvase], because with the deficit that exists, the entire Buendía reservoir would have to be introduced to recover the Ojos del Guadiana ”, indicates Félix Romero, general director of the Natural Environment of Castilla-La Mancha. He is aware that the current greater efficiency in the use of water is not going to get them out of the problem and advocates expanding the scope of application to the La Mancha Húmeda Biosphere Reserve. [25.000 hectáreas en 400.000 de territorio]”. At the moment, the regional government has created a label with that denomination that guarantees that the crops are sustainable with the maintenance of the aquifer. They hope to have the badged products on the market starting this fall.
Teresa Ribera’s department informs EL PAÍS that it is analyzing a recent manifesto signed by more than 500 scientists, who asked for water from the Tagus, “in order to take the appropriate measures” that lead to “guaranteeing water contributions for the conservation of the park”. “In any case,” they clarify, “this is the responsibility of several different public administrations.” In the Ministry of Agriculture they explain, for their part, that they are committed to promoting an irrigation policy because it multiplies productivity by six, increases farmers’ income up to four times and generates three times more employment. Their objective is to modernize the irrigation system with an investment of 2,130 million euros until 2027.
And meanwhile, Alejandro del Moral, nature guide and owner of the local tourism company Caminos del Guadiana, explains how “it is emotionally hard to see how Las Tablas continues to degrade and become a theme park”. In the labor aspect, they have had an 80% drop in visits at Easter. “No one of my generation [tiene 36 años] He has contemplated the natural functioning of the tables ”, he specifies.
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Photography samuel sanchez
infographic Nacho Catalan
Graphic Edition gabriel bravo
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