From Doñana to the Sierra de Aracena: the other 'water war' that hangs over Huelva

• Environment The last water war is fought in Doñana

• Conflict Doñana farmers explode against criticism: "The park is still here because we wanted it to"

Juan, who is known in Aracena as 'el Chanco', has spent his whole life growing potatoes, peppers or cucumbers in his garden in the Barranco de la Fuente del Rey.

As a child he already went with his father to the small family farm, from which four generations have lived.

Today, at 66 years old and already retired, he continues planting, although only for his

, and he sees with dismay how his garden could have its days numbered if the project to extract water from the nearby Molino del Bombo well goes ahead, with which it is intended to alleviate the water deficit suffered by some neighboring towns.

The entire Barranco de la Fuente del Rey, says Juan, is a

that has "always" supplied the markets of Aracena and its surroundings and that has been irrigated with water from its subsoil.

The same one that now wants to be removed and taken, through large pipes, to the municipalities that do not have it.

If that happens, he laments, the source will "dry up" and with it something more than a garden, a way of life, will die.

The extraction of water from the Molino del Bombo well is part of the Sierra de Huelva

project , a plan promoted in 2018 by the then socialist government of the Junta de Andalucía and whose origins are even older, in 2008, but it had barely developed.

Now, the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Sustainable Development has reactivated it in order to put an end to the restrictions that towns such as Santa Olalla del Cala, Mina Concepción, Higuera de la Sierra or Cortelazor periodically suffer and that with the drought have seen even more aggravated their situation.

El Molino del Bombo is just one part of this project, which also contemplates the interconnection of the towns in the region with the

which, paradoxically and despite being in the Aracenense district, does not supply water to any town in the Sierra Huelva. .

In fact, it is the Sevillian capital and its metropolitan area that

from the water it stores.

The owners of the farms through which the pipes that will take the water from the well to the

in recent weeks

and the alarms have been raised in Aracena, where a platform has been set up that has already collected signatures against the project and has called a large demonstration for next March 19.

Its promoters assure that they are not against the Water Ring project and, much less, that the neighboring municipalities that see each summer how water stops flowing from their taps have a

.

"It's not that," emphasizes Pedro Barranco, spokesman for the Platform against the Exploitation of the Molino del Bombo Aquifer, who advocates that rather than extracting more water from an

that is already under great pressure, construction of the connections with the Aracena reservoir, with which both Aracena and the rest of the municipalities would have more than enough water.

Barranco recalls how other springs, such as the Fuente del Rey itself, which gives its name to the ravine where the threatened orchards are concentrated, have already dried up due to the extraction of water.

"The wetlands are drying up, the

and the ecosystem of the mountains are being broken," warns the spokesman for a platform that, in addition to mobilizations and signatures, intends to fight legally against the project.

Meeting of the platform of those affected by the Molino del Bombo well project. EL MUNDO

The

that is brewing in the mountains of Huelva is not exactly the same as the one that has been unleashed in the surroundings of the Doñana National Park on account of the bill that the Andalusian Parliament is processing to regularize more irrigated land, but it has common elements and, basically, underlines Rafael Navascués, spokesman for Ecologists in Action, what there is is an overexploitation of water resources.

The well of Molino del Bombo is "a sample button", says Navascués, of a problem that affects the entire Sierra de Aracena and Picos de Aroche, a natural park of high environmental value.

"The problem is that in the mountains there are many projects that draw water and that are neither for

nor for supply";

he criticizes.

have been put into operation in recent years

that are fed by underground aquifers, as is the case in Los Llanos de la Belleza, in Aroche.

And to that we must add urban plans to build second and third homes, says the conservationist spokesman, and even golf courses, with what that would mean for the already depleted water resources in the area.

"It is a very big problem, the aquifers are strategic reserves and the uses of water must be prioritized," insists Navascués.

For their part, sources from the Ministry of Agriculture, Livestock and Sustainable Development emphasize that this Water Ring project was designed by previous governments and that what has been done is to start it "and not keep it in a drawer."

What it is about, these sources emphasize, is to guarantee the water supply to

who, in many cases, receive the supply when summer arrives from tanker trucks.

But the residents who are beginning to organize in Aracena are not convinced by the explanations and, above all, as the spokesperson for the platform insists, they do not understand why they cannot all be supplied from the nearby reservoir which, for now at least, only carries water to Seville.

If the sources dry up and the orchards cannot be irrigated, not only will traditional uses and a form of sustainable agriculture be lost.

"This leads to the

", he says, and to delve into the evils of empty Spain.

"I have already retired and my children are not going to continue, but this hurts a lot," says Juan, 'el Chanco', one of the

in the Barranco de la Fuente del Rey who is fighting for the water to continue flowing.

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