The Executive of Juan Manuel Moreno has agreed to modify the controversial article of the administrative simplification decree law, which was validated this Wednesday by Parliament, and in which the Government of Spain saw a risk of “retroactive legalization” of crops in the area of Doñana , that is, the same precept that the PP and Vox irrigation law contained to amnesty illegal agricultural land next to the Natural Park.
The change is not limited to a simple syntactic nuance. The new wording is a tailor-made suit for illegal farmers in the Doñana area, who are excluded from the reform of the Andalusian Forest Law, and will also be retroactive from last February 17, when the macro simplification decree came into force. , thus neutralizing those who had requested the conversion of their forest lands into agricultural land under this reform.
The PSOE claims to be aware that some of them had already requested it from the Board to take advantage of the initial wording of the decree. The modification of the simplification decree law will be introduced in another decree law that the Government Council will approve next week or the following week.
The previous wording will remain in force until then, but its potential beneficiaries – in case they request a change in the use of their land – will lose their rights retroactively as soon as the new text comes into force.
Sources from the Andalusian Executive assure that “they are not aware” that any farmer has requested this right under the first wording of the article, still in force. “The effect of the rule was not automatic. They have to request it from the Board and we authorize it. AND [en caso de las parcelas irregulares de Doñana] “We would not have authorized it,” they warn from San Telmo.
“Pants dropping” or “semantic nuance”
For the socialists, the modification agreed this Wednesday between the central government and the Board is “an amendment to the entirety” and a “lowering of pants” by Moreno; while the Andalusian Executive speaks of a “simple semantic nuance” and a “slight technical and explanatory modification.” “This agreement is one more example of President Moreno’s disposition, who puts the interest of the Andalusians first,” Presidency sources say.
The Secretary of State for the Environment and the Andalusian advisors for the Environment and the Presidency met this afternoon electronically and agreed on a new wording of article 242 of the simplification decree that completely eliminates that possibility that the Board denies, but which for Minister Teresa Ribera was so serious as to suspend the pact for Doñana signed with Moreno in November.
The new wording reads as follows: “Those surfaces on which plantations of short-shift forest species have been implemented in an intensive regime, in which there were authorized agricultural uses prior to the implementation of these forest species, and the owner of the same decides the reversal of agricultural use in it. Short-life forest species are considered those whose life span is less than twenty years. Said surfaces will only be subject to the provisions of this law while these short-shift forest species are present implanted on them.”
The previous wording, in the eyes of the Andalusian PSOE that put Ribera on notice, seemed to allow the reconversion to agricultural land of land that was agricultural in the past but is currently forestry. That is, a formula to grow red fruits where it is not possible today, specifically, in the northern crown of Doñana, as the controversial PP and Vox law intended. Moreno suspended that rule in exchange for a state investment of 350 million euros in the Huelva region.
The new wording also specifies that this assumption “will not apply to surfaces that, meeting the characteristics described in the first paragraph, meet any of the following criteria: Surfaces that have been returned to agricultural uses by their owners prior to their entry. in force; surfaces found in public forests; surfaces found in forests classified as public utility; and surfaces found in forests located in any kind of public domain.
That is, the change of use from forestry to agricultural is maintained in the reform of the Andalusian Forest Law, but a posteriori, not retroactively. From the approval of the standard forward, not backwards. The Board has always denied that this article was a formula to legalize irrigated crops in Doñana “through the back door”, as the PSOE denounced, and assures that this hypothesis only occurs in 40 hectares in all of Andalusia. Although a part, indeed, is in the northern crown of the National Park. The other in the Vega de Granada. ‘
Source: www.eldiario.es
