With a lot of patience and a map, Jesús Martínez toured the municipality of Níjar, in Almería, for a decade, one of the largest in Spain, with 600 square kilometers. Between 2008 and 2018, the professor of Territorial Planning walked this desert terrain of boulevards, chameleons and veteran volcanoes. He was looking for farmhouses and, through them, the ethnographic footprint of their inhabitants. Most are abandoned. But there are others, such as Las Chiqueras, next to the Genoveses beach, that are still active. This is the epicenter of a long controversy since its owners announced their intention to convert it into a hotel. Already authorized by the Junta de Andalucía, it is rejected by various environmental groups and the Association of Friends of the Cabo de Gata Natural Park. Not only because of its environmental impact. They fear that it will serve as a precedent for the development of new tourist accommodation in old buildings in the region.
Within the protected space there are at least another 50 farmhouses in ruins that would be in a position to house hotels. In fact, different promoters are already waiting for a response from the Autonomous Administration to rehabilitate two of them together with Rodalquilar. “The impact can be enormous and very dangerous for the park. The desert does not accept any more human cargo”, warns José Rivera, president of the Mediterranean Ecologist Group, while tourism entrepreneurs believe that the opening of these establishments would be positive for the local economy.
Professor Martínez’s study, signed together with Diego Casas and Diego Varón, entitled The farmhouses of the recent past in Campo de Níjar and published by the University of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, shows the great historical richness of an area full of scattered people. Most of them were buildings built at the end of the 19th century or the beginning of the 20th and dedicated to rainfed agriculture on huge estates.
With few exceptions, such as the Cortijo del Fraile, declared an Asset of Cultural Interest and the scene of a crime that inspired the Blood Wedding of Lorca, they fall to pieces, they show their entrails. “It is a heritage that is in danger because nobody preserves it, but it helps to know what life was like then,” says the professor, now retired. Life was hard, difficult in a harsh desert with a lot of misery and hardly any water, with our backs to the exquisite beaches of this corner of Almeria’s geography. Juan Goytisolo described it in Nijar Fields after a trip to the area in the 1950s. So, as a resident of the region responded, there were only “lizards and stones” there. “He is the poorest in Spain,” he blurted out.
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The situation has changed in recent decades. First, due to the development of intensive agriculture, which drastically changed the landscape and enclosed it under plastic. It was the fruit of the National Colonization Institute. In the 50s and 60s he founded new towns such as Campohermoso or San Isidro de Níjar, which welcomed the inhabitants of the area, who gave up the farmhouses, although some survived by becoming tiny towns, such as Las Hortichuelas, La Boca del Fraile or Presillas. Low. The economy prospered, like demography, with the arrival of migrants, labor from greenhouses that reach the very limits of the natural space, founded in 1987.
virgin beaches
Then tourism landed. He found virgin beaches, an exceptional landscape and picturesque fishing villages. In the 1990s, the Junta de Andalucía drew up the Plan for the Management of Natural Resources (PORN), which conceived the development of new infrastructures and facilitated the creation of tourist accommodation in abandoned buildings. This is what has happened, among others, in La Loma or El Campillo, in Los Albaricoques, while others were restored for private homes. Incidentally, housing developments and bricks exploded in the coastal towns of Níjar, such as San José or Las Negras, which have doubled their residents in the last decade.
The PORN was renovated to adapt it to the new reality and stop, in part, the urban rampage that had occurred in the park. Its second version was drafted in 2008 and approved in 2018 after a long judicial process. It came to reorder the situation in a region that has gone from receiving tourists occasionally to having more than a million a year, but environmentalists denounced that the document excessively expanded the area where it could be built in urban centers and allowed buildings on protected land. They asked to prioritize the preservation of the ecosystem. They were not heard.
![Cortijo del Fraile, with its threshing floors.](https://imagenes.elpais.com/resizer/QQmUP6iwUzMGcKUL92LFj44QdKc=/414x0/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/prisa/MIWDS356FVAAVBO4QOL5TYDCHM.jpg)
The consequence, in his opinion, is what has happened in Las Chiqueras, located on protected land called C1, where the tourist use of the old farmhouses is neither expressly authorized nor prohibited. The conservationists defend that it is not legal to do so and the Junta de Andalucía, that it is. The future hotel already has its Unified Environmental Authorization.
With 30 rooms, a swimming pool and parking, it intends to renovate a livestock facility in front of the Genoveses beach. The environment is almost virgin and its environmental value forces each summer to limit access to this stretch of coastline, with attractive coves of dark volcanic sand and dunes such as Mónsul, the setting for films such as The endless story or Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Only between June and September 2021, just over 63,000 vehicles and 200,000 people circulated along these beaches, according to data from the Andalusian Government, when San José, its base town, barely touches a thousand residents. There, along with Las Chiqueras, there are four other farmhouses belonging to the same family: El Molino, Genoveses, El Romeral and Mónsul.
“If the first one is authorized, the owners could take it as a precedent to request to open accommodations in the others. It is our greatest fear”, says Pilar González, president of the Association of Friends of the Cabo de Gata Natural Park, which assures that if the first hotel is allowed to be developed, it would initiate the judicial process. “We will reach Europe or wherever it is needed,” she says.
The environmental authorization of the Junta de Andalucía is subject to the project being declared of public interest. According to the Ministry of the Environment, the final responsibility is thus transferred to the Níjar City Council, which must ratify (or not) that declaration. Municipal sources say that they can no longer refuse. And the mayor, Esperanza Pérez, avoids speaking clearly in public. It seeks to avoid problems such as the one that led the Supreme Court last fall to order the municipality to pay 8.7 million euros after it paralyzed works on 150 homes and a luxury hotel in La Fabriquilla in the 1980s. Pérez stressed A few days ago he will not give his personal opinion, but “legally speaking” he has little room for manoeuvre.
Environmental groups, on the other hand, believe that the declaration of public interest can be denied. They affirm that it is feasible because, after all, it is a private initiative that will not bring great benefits to the environment. At the moment, the municipality has resubmitted the same allegation that it sent more than a year ago to the Junta de Andalucía, so the procedures may be delayed. In it, he reiterates to the Autonomous Administration that one of the roads that the promoter considers private is public, according to the Cadastre. It asks that “connections to the water supply and sanitation network” be considered without occupying said road.
![Cabo de Gata, Almeria.](https://imagenes.elpais.com/resizer/wRRF2eq1RaGoYaAEVbmbVbgeMgE=/414x0/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/prisa/CPJAQLKVZVEURN36C2RSAQQVKI.jpg)
For Luis Berraquero, territorial delegate of Greenpeace in Andalusia, this future hotel — over which he does not plan to litigate after the eternal struggle in El Algarrobico — will have a “call effect” for others in Cabo de Gata. “The fear is that the area will become a complex with several hotels,” adds Marcos Diéguez, from Ecologists in Action, who wonders what is the limit that will make the Administration realize the damage that the proliferation of tourist spaces can cause in the nature park.
It is enough to walk through its network of paths to find farmhouses in poor condition, almost demolished constructions among cacti and esparto grass that even are part of a tourist route. There are already at least three projects promoted in the last two years. The first, yes, was rejected by the Junta de Andalucía. Businessman Daniel Navarro —who in 2000 bought 200 hectares in the area for 20 million pesetas— wanted to build an 11-room hotel in the El Ricardillo farmhouse, near the turquoise waters of Cala San Pedro, east of Las Negras . In April of last year the environmental authorization was denied because the project was incompatible with soil protection.
More initiatives in process
Two other initiatives are in process. On the one hand, the construction of a rural hotel in El Albardinal, just over a kilometer from the urban center of Rodalquilar and not far from the old gold mines. They are undeveloped land of special protection in the natural park, cataloged as C1, the same as that of the Genoveses beach. Promoted by the company Rodalquilarita SL in a farmhouse of which only a few walls remain standing, it foresees the construction of six rooms, common areas, a swimming pool and a path.
The second project is an establishment on Camino del Playazo number 3 —a stone’s throw from the homonymous beach— with eight rooms and a swimming pool. The area is also non-developable and protected, which is why the Association of Friends of the Cabo de Gata Natural Park has presented allegations in both cases. The conservationists allege, according to the documentation, that both are located on land classified as C1, where the PORN does not say anything about whether or not the old buildings can be transformed for tourist use, as is the case in Las Chiqueras. And given the precedent, they can suffer the same fate.
In addition to the work of Jesús Martínez, there are others such as the one titled Farmhouses, Haciendas and Wineries edited in 2004 by the then Andalusian Ministry of Public Works and Transport or the Inventory of the traditional farmhouses of Níjar, by Rafael Caro Perín, dating from 2011. Based on these studies and knowledge of the environment, the Association of Friends of the Cabo de Gata Natural Park estimates that there are 50 buildings with the potential to become tourist accommodation in the area. Almost all of them in ruins, they are scattered here and there, in the middle of the desert. This means that, according to the Mediterranean Ecologist Group, the expansion of these establishments could be a “serious problem” for the territory due to the need to build roads and pipelines in virgin spaces. “Today the tourist pressure is above all on the beach, but if it grows inland, the park will no longer be natural,” José Rivera insists.
For the employers, on the other hand, it would be something like a dream. When asked what would happen if more hotels were developed in old buildings, the answer from Francisco García, president of the Association of Tourist Services Entrepreneurs of the Cabo de Gata-Níjar Natural Park, was clear: “Hopefully”. “It would be positive for the local economy and for the public coffers to allow the recovery of ruins,” says García. The person in charge is sure that a balance can be “found” between tourism development and the environment. He calls for the participation of all social agents to define Cabo de Gata’s development model and to have clear “rules of the game” to know what can or cannot be done. “That, at least, would avoid clashes of opinion,” concludes García.
Sources from the Junta de Andalucía respond that any project that complies with the law will be processed and, where appropriate, authorized. They always transfer the ultimate responsibility to municipalities such as Níjar. Meanwhile, the only thing that businessmen and environmentalists agree on is that they all believe that in the summer months, high season, there are too many tourists in the natural park. More than one of the main protected areas in Andalusia can withstand, today at greater risk than ever.
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