The five Campos Peña brothers, owners of the Hato Blanco Viejo farm, in the Sevillian municipality of Aznalcázar, have escaped prison despite the fact that the Court of Seville certifies that they looted water from Doñana for six years, that they had numerous previous similar sanctions, that they prevented the water police from accessing the property and that with the illegal extraction of resources they put “the ecosystem” from which the national park is fed “at serious risk.” But there was a “hyper-extraordinary” delay in the process, a “paralysis without justification for three years” that has led the court to reduce their sentences for “very qualified” undue delay, with which they have avoided prison.
The five landowners have been convicted of crimes against the environment and damage caused to the public hydraulic domain, as was the first sentence a year ago, but the sentences have gone from three years and five months in prison to one and a half years, for so they won’t have to go to prison. The Court, however, maintains in all its aspects the rest of the pronouncements of the initial ruling, including that for six years (between 2008 and 2013) they extracted at least 19.4 million cubic meters of the Doñana aquifer without a license. This water, for example, is almost equivalent to what the metropolitan area of Seville with its 1.1 million inhabitants consumes in two months.
What happened then to cause this judicial delay from which this large landowner family has benefited? The Court itself does not explain it, and initially considers that it is not something attributable to a delaying strategy of the accused. Initially, and taking into account the complexity of the necessary expert reports, an acceptable pace was maintained until the oral trial order was decreed on September 12, 2017. From there, “the criminal case enters a deep sleep” from which it only awakens with a ruling on December 3, 2020.
“Overwork in Criminal Courts”
In fact, if it is taken into account that the Prosecutor’s Office presented its complaint on April 23, 2013, the Court believes that the cumbersome nature of the case “does not justify an investigation that lasted four years,” which would have opened the door to mitigating delay. improper in its lowest degree as initially applied. But if he does not find this reasonable, “much less the unjustified paralysis for three years, nor the trial periods”, which by the way he emphasizes are “marked by excessive work in the Criminal Courts of Seville.”
In September 2017, the procedural sequence “becomes absolutely paralyzed and without activity.” “Three years and three months without any action, without referral of the file for prosecution, constitutes a delay that exceeds the extraordinary, since there is no reason or cause that justifies it.” “The case collapses once the intermediate phase is over,” states the latest ruling, which can only be appealed in cassation before the Supreme Court.
The trial is finally set for February 22, 2022, and there the defendants do try a delaying maneuver: they change lawyers and say that he cannot attend because that date was already committed to another case, a delay that “cannot be attributed to the administration of justice.” Except for this, “there is no evidence in the development of the process that the accused party has hindered or obstructed the procedure.”
“Evident intention to hide” the extracted water
Consequently, the mitigating circumstance of simple delay already included in the initial sentence increases one degree and becomes highly qualified, with the consequent reduction of penalties despite the fact that the crime against the environment on a farm where rice is grown is recognized. and cotton and is also the birthplace of a wild cattle ranch with its own tent. In total, 456 hectares are irrigated, for which an annual permit of 3.4 million cubic meters is granted, an amount that between 2008 and 2013 “has sometimes exceeded double what is allowed.”
In addition to causing damage to the public hydraulic domain estimated at almost two million euros, the ruling recalls that in previous years (between 1997 and 2007) up to 13 more sanctions were imposed (some ratified by the Supreme Court) also for illegal extraction of resources. . With this “continued and concerted” action, the defendants put “the natural system at serious risk.” During these years they refused to put meters in the wells for which they had a license, something they only did when they were forced by judicial means and which “reveals an obvious intention to hide the amount of water extracted.”
He also emphasizes that “it cannot be sustained” that the five Campos Peña brothers collaborated during the process. In this sense, remember that “society’s tenacious opposition to hindering and avoiding the action of the storm police in order to enter the property and carry out checks is persistent and repetitive.” Ultimately, it is considered that what they did was create “a permanent scenario of opacity regarding the cultivation that was developed on the Hato Blanco Viejo farm.”
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