When the shadows of the last sun grow longer, the elderly man takes his evening stroll.

Leaning on his cane, he works his way from bank to bank on El Rocio's promenade.

“A single ruin,” he sighs, while his gaze wanders from the white pilgrimage church to the lagoon.

“I've never seen anything like it in my entire life.

And I'm 73 years old, ”he says sadly.

“Normally the water would have to go much further.

But since October it has rained as little as it has not for almost a decade. "

Hans-Christian Roessler

Political correspondent for the Iberian Peninsula and the Maghreb based in Madrid.

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In the largest wetland in Europe, many flamingos are on dry land.

The marshland on the banks of the pilgrimage site has largely been transformed into a steppe;

horses and cows graze there now.

Only a few shallow puddles are left.

Wild geese fight for a place in the grayish-brown broth.

Six million migratory birds make a stopover in the Doñana National Park on their way from northern Europe to their winter quarters in Africa.

Some of them even come from Siberia.

One fifth of the original area

But at the beginning of winter, large parts of the UNESCO natural heritage resemble an African desert. Normally from October onwards the rains fill the groundwater reservoirs of the 125,000 hectare biosphere reserve on the banks of the Guadalquivir and the Atlantic. In the “Marismas”, the swampy marshland, hundreds of ponds, lakes and lagoons are formed, which animals and plants particularly love - until the summer heat comes with great drought. But it has rarely been as bad as 2021. Every time the biologist Carmen Díaz drove from her office in Seville to the huge shifting dunes in the past few weeks, the largest permanent lagoon not far from the sea had shrunk even further. In the end it was only a fifth of the original area.

"Of course there are fluctuations, but that's no longer normal, it's alarming," says the wetland expert. For Carmen Díaz, the sad remnant of the Santa Olalla Lagoon is “clear evidence of the decline of the entire system”. She watches anxiously as the first animals and plants disappear. There are more than 4000 species in the park; the recently endangered Iberian lynx has one of its most important refuge areas there. It also rains less often because of climate change, the groundwater level is falling continuously, and many areas are only flooded for a short time at most.

“This is not a new situation; it has been established at least since 1988,” says Carmen Díaz.

Back then, it wasn't just the farmers on the edge of the national park who began to tap into the underground water reservoir for their plantations.

Wells have also been drilled in the seaside resort of Matalascañas, not far from the largest lagoon, to irrigate the many pools and gardens.

More than 150,000 people vacation there in summer.

In November only hungry cats roam the deserted beach boulevard.

The expansion of the ugly concrete castles on the Atlantic has stopped.

But the reputation of the “red gold” is still too tempting for many farmers today.