He wanted to answer Paco Núñez, his opponent from the PP in the next regional elections, but with this he has also touched on a sensitive issue. Emiliano García-Page has defended that the socialist governments were the only ones that “regularized and legalized” irrigation wells in Castilla-La Mancha, specifically in the Guadiana basin. He blurted it out to Núñez in response to the announcement of the latter to do in this region “the same as in Doñana”but it has done so in the midst of the controversy over the measure of the Andalusian government, of the PP, precisely to legalize wells and when the Tablas de Daimiel National Park It is also going through an almost structural crisis.
Ecologists reproach scientists for “benefiting” “interests of large irrigators” in the Daimiel Tables
Further
In an act of the party, García-Page has been upset by these statements by Paco Núñez, “when people know that the only regularized and legalized wells here, in the Guadiana, have been with socialist governments.” A measure, he has referred, that was paralyzed with the Government of María Dolores de Cospedal. “That people are not lied to,” he has claimed.
These statements occur the same day that the controversy continues over the measures in Doñana and also over the situation of the Tablas de Daimiel. Precisely, Ecologists in Action has come out today in step with the letter that more than half a thousand scientists made public asking for a new transfer of the Tagus for the battered Tablas de Daimiel.
As they affirm, this letter “benefits certain interests to the detriment of the rest of the citizens and the ecosystems of Castilla-La Mancha, intentionally or not.” This is a division of opinion that was already made clear at the last meeting of the Board of Trustees of the National Park, in which It was approved by a majority to request that water diversion from the central government, with the rejection of the ecologist members.
More than 50,000 illegal irrigation, according to WWF
In their response, the ecologists have also denounced the illegal irrigation around Las Tablas, which according to a recent WWF investigation covers at least 51,465 hectares. And “above all” legal irrigation, the increase of these, “unstoppable in our region” (from 20,000 to 110,000 in 40 years). “They consume more than 2,000 cubic hectometres in the Guadiana basin alone, 11 times more than all the people who inhabit that basin.”
Previously, the president of Castilla-La Mancha has called for a “consensus” in defense of water in this autonomous community, as it exists in Levante. “I love to see how in Murcia or Valencia, everyone supports the president who governs to get the water, but here that we see it happen, it is difficult to understand that they do not support me completely,” he lamented. For this reason, he has asked for “sincere support” when it comes to defending this land in terms of water, “whether in Madrid, in Brussels or wherever. It is the least that can be asked for, and it hurts that it does not happen ”, he considered.
He has also valued that to defend this land “you have to have strength and be autonomous. There is not water for everyone, and therefore, for the water to come here, it stops going elsewhere. So the water must be defended and fought for”, she stated.
