For a Moment everything is silent in the Bar, Antonio’s in El Colorado at Cádiz, as on the TV about the man is reported to have wanted to save his dog from a well shaft and was killed. Again. A man dies in a southern Spanish borehole. People listen to the message mute. It is not far from here to Totalán in Málaga. Everyone in Spain knows the name of Totalán. There, the two-year-old Julen was like two weeks ago 70 meters deep in a well shaft. 13 days, people were hoping that you can rescue the child alive out of this hole. However, Julen could only be recovered dead.

Andalusia is full of such shafts, boreholes, improvised lights, and Erdstollen. That people die in them, like twice now in quick succession, is rare. Actually, it goes where the drilling of such holes, to Survive. They claim anyway. Water is nowhere in Europe so just like in Andalusia and nowhere to be so sought after, since the South has decided to migrate to Spain to escape poverty in “la huerta de Europa”, the vegetable garden of the continent. No longer just a tradition grown products such as olives, oranges, lemons. No, strawberries have to be raspberries, blueberries, “frutas del bosque”, “forest fruits”, products for which there is not a Spanish name, which would be outside of botany circles.

A nearly impossible rescue

strawberries But grow with the corresponding irrigation in Andalusia in January – and so they satisfy the appetite of European consumers for any product at any time. The water for the intensive agriculture approach to create, is drilled for decades in the South of Spain, which holds the stuff. Greenpeace estimates that there are 1 Million illegal wells. Now that a child has fallen into such a fountain, has revived an ancient, long dried up debate in Spain, the debate about what is actually happening in the underground of the country.

The rescue operation for the small Julen took so long because of the reason in Totalán is a hard Rock, and for a parallel shaft, on the, the experts wanted to save the child, heavy rock drill bits to the mining area of Asturias brought in had to be. Since the scene of accident in a plantation of olives on a hill was, it took until the trucks could ever go there. But above all, the recovery was so difficult, because the shaft was 70 feet deep. Since there is no water bubbled out of him, he was forgotten and Julen undoing.

the Land of the fountain farmer

Also in the Bar, Antonio’s in El Colorado, it still goes to the boys. “Our company would have done that faster,” says one who claims to be an expert on the salvage. He works for a company for the construction of the well, as there are in the province of Cádiz more than 100. “Pocero”, “well Builder”, which is a thriving business in this dry area and not always legal. “Pozos luneros” called wells, which are dug in the moonlight.

to obtain A permit for a well, is difficult. “That’s why many choose to dig in the first place and to deal with the approval later”, writes the newspaper “El Mundo”. Illegal wells are for Julens death is a theme in the media and also in the Bars.

El Colorado is located in the largest vegetable growing area in the Western part of Andalusia. In the warehouse of the agricultural cooperative of pallets to be auctioned full of tomatoes, Zucchini, cucumbers and lettuce, the bidders come from the wholesale trade. Most of it goes in the Metropolitan areas of Madrid, Barcelona and Seville, which together have about 10 million people. And, of course, to Central Europe.

200 liters of water it takes to produce a kilogram of tomatoes, up to 500 litres for citrus fruits.

But El Colorado is a small patch of vegetable production in comparison to Almería at the other end of Andalusia. It was notorious there, the Campo de Dalías, due to the gigantic plastic tracks. Earlier area grew in the barren at most a few grapes. The desert-like environment was good as a movie backdrop for westerns such as Sergio Leone’s masterpiece “game me the song of death”. Then you came in the ‘ 70s, the idea to put plastic over the fields – actually, the Wind to stop. However, it was shown that the heat under the plastic in many products, two Crops a year were possible – if only with appropriate irrigation.

So the “mar de plástico” came to the “plastic sea”, Almería. 6000 acres are Packed with plastic. From Almería, the lion’s share of the production goes to Central and Northern Europe. The plantations will be irrigated in the dry Andalusia throughout the year, both in the West as in the East. “In both regions, is stolen in a gigantic Mass of water, and on top of that is wasted,” says Lola Yllescas from Cádiz. She is a teacher of natural history, studied a geologist and has been involved for many years in the “ecologists in action en acción”, one of the most important environmental associations in Spain. In Detail, you know the life cycle assessment of vegetable and fruit varieties: Around 200 litres of water it takes to produce a kilogram of tomatoes, up to 500 litres for citrus fruits. However, the biggest environmental sinners, as you call it, Avocados, with around 1000 litres per kilogram and mangoes with 1600. But together, the two fashion fruits make up only a fraction of the agricultural production. Lola Yllescas was even amazed at the herbal product from the Region is leading now because of new methods of cultivation, the black list of the Ecologists: the Olive.

The Home to be the Hotel

Actually, the olive tree is frugal and weather-resistant. In the North of Andalusia, with its long and cold winters olive plantation after plantation of olives. Before, things were simple: If it was in the rainy season, only sparse rainfall, the olives are small and hard, almost unsaleable. But now the growers need to harvest no more fear. For this, you have a countless number of drilling wells, mostly without concession. The balance sheet was a concern, says Lola Yllescas: approximately 4500 litres of water for 1 Kilo of olive.

From the Ökofussabdruck the men have heard in the Bar Antonio and El Colorado. “The reason water costs nothing, and the people have to turn around every Euro,” says one of the men. One of them says, that he could no longer live of tomatoes and Zucchini. Like so many others, he has prepared, therefore, to be house for holiday guests, his family lives during the summer months with Relatives.

There is a change of mentality

Andalusia is one of the strongholds of mass tourism in Europe. In the construction boom that began in the ‘ 60s and the mid-90s, a peak reached, was built in the Andalusian coast. “A Tourist consumes four times as much water as a Native,” says Lola Yllescas.

experts from the University of Granada warn that at the current rate of climate change of the Mediterranean, more and more periods of drought, in a few years all the land of Andalusia, the rocky is likely to be semi-desert.

Joan Corominas is Vice-President of the Foundation “New culture of water” in Sevilla, and was most recently the chief of the water Agency of the Region. For a year he is in retirement, and warns of an ecological disaster in Andalusia, which could only prevent a fundamental change in mentality. It should stop with the depletion of the vital resource water. “Of course, mass tourism is a huge problem,” he says. But to him, only 12 per cent of the water consumption of the Region accounts for. Three-quarters of the consumption of fresh water is in Andalusia, on the account of food production.

New government Ministry for the environment, triggers

strawberries come mostly from the district of Huelva on the Atlantic ocean, to the North-West of Cádiz. Plantations under plastic, as far as the eye can see. The strawberries from Huelva are Lola Yllescas is a particular Nuisance. To the Southeast of the cultivation area is situated at the mouth of the Guadalquivir river, the largest river in Andalusia, the Doñana national Park, a wetland area with many protected animal species. Here rest hundreds of thousands of migratory birds, here are the last Iberian lynx. However, at the edge of the Park, conservationists have discovered more than 1,000 illegal wells, the most for the Strawberry plantations. The environmental Association, WWF has brought against Spain by the EU because of the disastrous water management of a process. Doñana plays the Central role. 24. January has responded to the EU Commission and Spain to the European court of justice in Luxembourg and sued. “The Commission is concerned that the condition of the wetlands is not likely to deteriorate further, given that Spain fulfils its obligations both under the water framework Directive and under the habitats Directive”, is it in the justification.

Now there was a change of government in Andalusia, The socialists, had built up in nearly four decades, the Power of an all-encompassing Amigo-economy, had to make a coalition of Conservatives and liberal space, which is supported by the extreme Right. Among the first measures of the new centre-right government, the resolution of the Ministry of the environment; hence, only a Department in the Ministry of agriculture deals in the future. A fatal Signal.

(editing Tamedia)

Created: 30.01.2019, 21:31 PM