The south of Spain supplies half of Europe with strawberries. What is happiness for the farmers is death for the national park there. All water goes to strawberries, often illegally.
It's a disaster in the making: Spain's world-famous Donjana National Park, one of the largest wetlands in Europe, is in danger of drying up.
The natural paradise in the south of Spain, which is under the protection of UNESCO, is destroyed above all by large strawberry farms, where the red fruit grows for European consumers.
But instead of protecting Donjana Park and taking action against the hundreds of strawberry farmers who pump groundwater into their fields without permission, the conservative Andalusian regional government wants to legalize illegal cultivation. The European Commission, international environmental organizations and the Spanish government are talking about the scandal.
"The situation is critical," says Eloy Revilla (51). He is the head of the biological research station in the national park and the best expert on this endangered natural kingdom. The 1.200 square kilometer park is home to wild horses, imperial eagles, lynxes, turtles and millions of migratory birds. .
A symbol of death
Revilla points to a yellowish steppe surrounded by pines. It used to be a lagoon, he says. A lake where thousands of flamingos hunted crabs, snails and insect larvae. Due to the drop in the groundwater level, today that lagoon is just a dried up mud desert. It became a symbol of the death of Donjana Park.
Revilla says that a good 60 percent of all lagoons, which are the heart of life for the species living in the national park, have already dried up. Many endangered species that had one of their last refuges in this unique nature reserve also disappear with the lagoons.
Large plantations spread over more than 100 square kilometers in the north and west of the park.
Most of the strawberries that flood supermarkets in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and Luxembourg in the spring are grown under plastic roofs. The business with red fruits - mainly strawberries, but also raspberries - is, together with tourism, the most important economic sector in the southern Spanish province of Huelva, which is part of Andalusia.
The number of strawberry farms has been growing in the catchment area of Donjana Park for decades. Because the demand of Europeans is increasing. Spanish fruit is usually cheaper than berries grown in northern and central European countries.
Spanish politicians of all parties were happy about the boom and largely ignored the massive theft of water by farmers.
A tough fight against water thieves
But the pressure has increased since the European Court condemned Spain in 2021 for overexploitation and insufficient protection measures for the Donjana: the National Water Protection Agency has started surveillance to track down water thieves. Environmental police came and closed hundreds of illegal wells with excavators and cement.
But the success is partial: some farmers soon found underground water reservoirs elsewhere.
More than twenty European retail chains, including the owners of many supermarkets in German-speaking countries, have joined the appeal of the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF).
Spanish politicians and farmers are being appealed to guarantee the sustainability of farming. The war for water is also raging among farmers.
It is a war between farmers who have legal rights to use it and those who illegally irrigate their fields with groundwater. There are reports of threats to those farmers who are committed to sustainable strawberry cultivation and want to stand in the way of illegal growers.
Climate change exacerbates the problem
The problem of water scarcity has worsened due to climate change. Now not only the national park is drying up, but increasingly the strawberry fields too. According to data from the regional association of farmers "Freshuelva", this year's yield will probably be 30 percent lower than last year.
Due to the lack of water, even honest strawberry producers have to close more and more plantations.
Still, none of that seems to bother conservative Andalusian leader Juan Manuel Moreno. With a plan to legalize nearly 600 illegal growers, he is further exacerbating the problem.
Moreno says that he has nothing to do with the lack of water, but that it is solely the fault of the Social Democratic Prime Minister of Spain, Pedro Sanchez. Because the government does not invest enough in the region and does not supply water to Donjan.
Sánchez responded with a clear message: the Spanish national government will use all available means to stop Moreno's strawberry farming plan.
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