Murcia Today Weekly Bulletin 12th September

Covid Spain

It's surreal to think that yesterday marked exactly six months since the WHO declared that the emerging Covid-19 crisis was officially a pandemic, six months which have changed our daily lives to an unbelievable extent.

We are sitting here now in a world which has recorded over 28 million cases of covid, although the true number of cases is significantly higher as most are never even detected and certainly not reported in some areas of the world, with a fatalities figure of 909,000, although again, we know that the real fatalities total passed the 1 million mark a long time ago. Our economy has shrunk here in Spain by 18%, our debt levels have grown, our jobless levels increased and all over the country businesses are reeling from the events of the last 6 months and worrying about what is still to come.

We’re not likely to have any sort of vaccine in Spain now until the early part of next year, and many believe we are still only in the early phases of what will be a very difficult second wave this autumn, which won´t really show its teeth until temperatures fall and autumn begins in earnest.

The figures published on Friday by the Spanish Health Minstry confirm that Spain is well and truly riding on the crest of a second wave of infections, the data published being the highest number of infections recorded in a single day since the pandemic began, those six long months ago.

The overall total increased by 12,183 new cases of Covid-19  on Friday, bringing the total case count to 566,326.

On Friday 4th September the total was 498,989, so the increase in cases this week is 67,337, or 13.4%.

Last week the total number of new cases was 59,703 cases, so the number of cases has risen by almost 1100 a day, the acceleration between the two weeks being 7634 cases.

So during this week, Spain has added an average of 9,619 new cases a DAY to the total as opposed to 8,528 per DAY last week, a substantial acceleration.

The situation a month ago;

On 11th August Spain reported 326,612 cases and 28,581 deaths.

On 11th September Spain reported 566,326 cases and 29,747 deaths.

Therefore, the number of covid cases reported in Spain during the last month is 239,714 and 1166 deaths.

Hospitalisations:
There are currently 8,658 patients admitted with Covid-19 throughout Spain and 1,181 in an ICU intensive care unit. In the last 24 hours there have been 1,124 admissions and 919 discharges. The occupancy rate of beds occupied by coronavirus patients in Spain is 7.5 percent.

The Ministry of Health only started to publish data relating to hospitalisations three weeks ago, at which point there were barely 500 patients in ICU units; 21 days alter we have 1181, a figure more than double in three weeks, and on Friday the number of admissions was the highest ever recorded. The same can be said for general admissions; three weeks ago we had 4,636 covid patients in isolation wards; today we have 8,658, again, almost double.

So there is no doubt at all that Spain is in a phase of acceleration.

Back to school

Fernando Simón, who heads up the Centro de Coordinación de Alertas y Emergencias Sanitarias (CCAES) and presents the daily figures for Spain, said on Friday that the return to school has not yet impacted on the figures being reported.

It's certainly been a busy week on news desks this week trying to follow the first wave of returns, as some of the autonomous regions resumed some, or all, of their classes and next week will be even more chaotic as other regions, including Murcia, initiate their own return to school, bringing the total up to 8 million children across Spain beginning the new course year.

The story that pretty much sums up the week broke on Friday evening, when it was announced that the two Royal princesses, heir presumptive to the Spanish throne, Leonor, and her sister Sofía, would be quarantining for 14 days, after a pupil in the class attended by Leonor, tested positive.

Enormous efforts are being made to isolate children into smaller “bubble groups”, stagger classes, reduce class sizes, implement strict measures to protect children, but all over Spain there have already been many classes closed due to positive cases in both staff and pupils and significant problems in some areas with parents choosing not to take their children to school at all.

The national Education Minister, Isabel Celaá, said on Thursday that “incidents” had occurred in 53 schools nationally this week, out of the 28,600 schools which have resumed classes, so although dozens of class closures and quarantines have been reported in the first 3 days of the new term, the numbers are relatively small, although obviously, the number of such cases will increase once the remaining schools return.

In order to reduce the impact on fellow pupils, the normal procedure is to quarantine the whole class or the "bubble" if one positive is detected, the same process being followed in the guarderías, or pre-school nurseries used by working parents for children too young to go to school. This week here in Murcia we have already seen examples of this system in operation; on Thursday two guarderías in Cartagena were forced to quarantine groups of children and the staff caring for them after children tested positive ( in one case the child was a one year old baby who tested positive after a family gathering last weekend. One family member developed covid symptoms, contact tracers then contacted all of those who had maintained contact with this one person and all were tested, the results returned on Thursday morning showing the child was positive, and within an hour the class and teachers had been sent home to quarantine and a team called in to disinfect the classroom).

Next week Murcian schoolchildren return to school, and in anticipation of staff members being forced to quarantine should their pupils test positive, the Murcian government announced on Friday afternoon that it had contracted an additional 700 teaching staff, in addition to the 800 "spare" staff already contracted. It's no wonder that this week the figures relating to the level of debt at national, regional and town hall level have increased significantly as our authorities are forced to spend more money trying to cope with the current situation.

The regional government has also paid for 7,500 rapid tests to be carried out on all staff working in the region's universities before courses resume.

Working parents are therefore faced with considerable uncertainty about the term ahead, but we still have no clarification about how parents forced to stop work to care for children who are quarantined will be compensated financially. The topic has surfaced several times this week, but without a definitive conclusion as yet.

There is also the problem that many parents are anxious about their children returning to school. In some areas parents have simply not taken their children to school, even though this is illegal.

An example of this occurred in Zamora province, in Castilla y León. "In the Basic Health Zone of Puebla de Sanabria, 214 students failed to turn up to class on the first day of their course. "We are afraid". The few fathers and mothers who yesterday accompanied their children to the Monte Gándara school in El Puente de Sanabria did not hide their fear at the start of the school year.
School buses arrived empty or at most with the odd child on board. Some parents, despite their initial good intentions, decided to return home with their children.

In the end, the school classrooms were only occupied with 5 out of a hundred schoolchildren who came from several towns in an area still under the onslaught of coronavirus.

The education department of the regional government has purchased 17,000 terminals which can be loaned to pupils unable to attend school presencially and installed virtual classrooms in the schools."

And one little village made the national papers, when parents decided not to risk sending their children 17 kilometres on a bus to school and the council financed the re-opening of a village school closed four years ago due to de-population to keep the children safe and limit their exposure to covid: Covid allows rural school to re-open as parents worry about covid risk of sending their children on school bus.

Here in Murcia, another aspect of this same problem surfaced when the municipality of Jumilla was confined due to soaring covid cases. It joins Archivel in Caravaca de la Cruz in confinement, one of the effects being that children are not allowed to return to school while the municipality is confined and must study from home.

In Totana, also in Murcia, the Mayor pleaded with the regional health authority for schools in his municipality to remain closed next week, as case numbers are climbing at an alarming rate once again. Totana was the last municipality in Spain to come out of the de-escalaltion process and was the first in Murcia to go back into confinement due to an outbreak and the Mayor is really worried about the potential problems his municipality could face from next week.

Confinement

There are now over 100,000 people in Spain in geographical confinement. Obviously Jumilla and Archivel are those familiar to Murcian residents, but there are also confinements in la Rioja,  Andorra, Palma de Mallorca, where four districts have been confined, in Beniganím in Valencia and last night Galicia extended restrictions to six further municipalities due to an outbreak.

There are dozens of localised quarantines, one example being the yacht of the Qatar Royal Family:

Four covid cases on luxury yacht owned by Qatari royal family docked in Mallorca.The yacht had undertaken a 2 week cruise, stopping off in several ports, with family and friends of the royal family coming and going and it wasn't until it reached Mallorca that a crew member with symptoms tested positive : Click to read

The debate about shortening the quarantine period in Spain has continued throughout the week, as it has done across Europe. On Friday France became the first to make a decisive move, shortening its quarantine period from 14 days to 7, recognising the difficulties being experienced by families in complying with the 14 day quarantine whilst also trying to fulfil work commitments.

.The French also justify their decision by saying that their scientific advisers maintain that symptoms are visible after 5 days in the majority of cases, and the numbers in which symptoms take longer to manifest are so small that the economic gain of reducing the quarantine by half far outweighs the risk in these few instances.

In Spain, Fernando Simón feels that a 10 day quarantine would be a more realistic prospect, his point of view being that if, 10 days after diagnosis, a PCR test is negative and the patient has been without symptoms for three days, then the quarantine can be lifted.

He also believes that in the eventuality that a patient is asymptomatic, and a PCR test yields a negative result after ten days, then quarantine could be cut to ten days.

For the isolation shortening to be effective, a PCR test should be performed after five days in order to be able to verify for sure if the infection is still in the individual's body.

"Leaving the 14 days of quarantine rule is a big decision and getting it wrong is a big worry. If we assess the scientific evidence, we know that from days 8, 9 and 10, especially 10, onwards, the viral load is already very low and most people are no longer infectious. And then we can take some risk. If we know that from the fifth or seventh day, they can remain infectious, albeit in a very few cases, we have to assess how much that excess risk implies. ”

“ In Spain we are currently evaluating reducing the quarantine period from 14 to 10 days. Lowering to 5 or 7 will take more time. You have to assess the scientific evidence and make careful decisions so as not to take a step backwards, " he said. But that's as far as it's gone for the moment.

However, one case this week has dominated the media, that of a surfer in San Sebastian. The lady concerned was very publicly arrested on the beach, after fellow surfers, who knew she was Covid positive, denounced her to the police, annoyed that she had come down to the beach and put them all at risk because she was so desperate to go surfing, and had left her baby with a childminder after herself testing positive!

Estoy compartiendo en stories algunas de las lindezas que me llegan. Insultos por grabar a la socorrista con COVID surfeando... diciéndome que es una gripe más, que no hace daño a nadie .... que no hay pruebas de que una PCR positiva sea válida ... 🥴https://t.co/eFa2g1k8MA pic.twitter.com/nd4QVGpwHE

— JaviZone 🚀 Bolsazone (@JavierSanz) September 7, 2020

A young surfer filmed her arrest and as she's obviously a gorgeous looking girl, the case attracted significant media coverage. It also highlighted the major problem of Spaniards not complying with quarantine regulations, the Basque Country government admitting that her case was just the tip of the iceberg and that they had processed more than 150 denuncias made against residents for "jumping quarantine".

The problem of monitoring patients telephonically who should be quarantining is significant, it transpires, due to the huge rise in case numbers mentioned above and the limited resources available to carry out this task.

The same problem is occurring all over Spain and on Tuesday the Murcian health authorities indicated that up to 60% of those who should be quarantining are failing to do so, citing the economic cost and impracticality of maintaining such a long quarantine and balancing work and family commitments at the same time. They said that those who should be quarantining and aren´t, "habitually lie" to the tracers trying to monitor them and break quarantine. They also complained that the work of tracers is being complicated further as those who have tested positive "lie about where they have been and who they have been with" as generally they don´t want to admit that they have been to events which exceed the legal levels of numbers permitted and don´t want to get friends and family into trouble because they have also attended illegal events!

This leads logically onto this same problem of illegal gatherings, which has also been very prominent in the news this week.

Young people gathering is known to be a problem, so this week Spain has launched a Covid awareness campaign to target young people which is being rolled out all over the country. Exactly how does the Government get across a message that nobody wants to hear? Click here

But it's not just young people, it's all ages, the common factor being the word "gathering".

We'll use a few examples in Murcia, although again, there have been literally dozens of similar examples all over the country this week:

San Javier police break up three illegal gatherings involving 290 people. Click to read

In this case, those involved were Ecuadorians, celebrating the Virgen del Cisne, their annual fiestas. An interesting article in the national media after the weekend revealed that this had not been an isolated situation here in Murcia and that all over Spain Latin-American communities had been the subject of police interventions for the same reason. The article went on to highlight that currently 40% of all cases in Spain relate to foreign communities, principally Latin-Amerian communities, which tend to be poorer communities, working in sectors requiring manual labour, with poorer paid jobs, and living in what is often known as "pisos patera" or flats in which large numbers of people live packed in like sardines. Covid it argued, is castigating the poorer members of society......sounds very much like the arguments being put forward in the UK relating to the higher rates amongst ethnic minorities in areas of the country.

Police in Murcia city break up nocturnal gatherings. On Tuesday evening Local Police in Murcia broke up two separate gatherings; one in the area around the sanctuary of La Fuensanta in which 120 young people were gathered and a second in the Cresta del Gallo where 60 young people were gathered.

33 denuncias for not wearing masks, nine for consumption of alcoholic drinks in a public place, one for making noise and one for carrying a knife were issued. Click for info

Lorca police break up party in a finca, and close down bar after private party with 100 guests. Click to read: On Tuesday evening Lorca police were called out by a neighbour to break up a gathering of young people in a private country finca in the El Campillo outlying district of the municipality.

A dozen young people were enjoying themselves, without wearing masks or social distancing and in breach of the regulations which are in place, establishing a maximum of 6 people in a gathering at any one time.The police also broke up a much larger gathering on Sunday, also in the El Campillo area at Darfary's grill, ( a take-away and chicken roasting venue) located in the district of Campillo, in which the Local Police also had to intervene at dawn last Sunday to break-up a party with karaoke and a dance floor with another hundred participants.

Municipal services have applied for a closure order of the premises.
On Saturday morning it was revealed that both of these premises would be fined 6,001 euros each for the infractions, the maximum permitted for the offences committed, an amount which may deter other hostelries from allowing illegal gatherings of this nature.

Local Police or Policia Local, are directly employed by local councils, and those in areas with growing levels of new cases are being pressured by their councils to force hostelries to comply with regulations; both of these occurred in Lorca, but on Friday the Mazarrón Mayor held a press conference appealing for the general public to be sensible and obey the rules, saying the Mazarrón local police would be issuing fines at every opportunity. On the same day the police received a tip-off that a large group of people were gathered in a popular Chinese restaurant on the outskirts of the Puerto de Mazarrón.

An eye-witness who had just arrived at the restaurant reported that the restaurant seemed busy, too busy for his own personal comfort, and he decided to go elsewhere, but as he walked out of the door the police pulled up and a “table of 8 outside very rapidly did a bit of shuffling and became a table of six and a table of two”.

The police, however, went straight into the restaurant, catching a large group of expat ladies enjoying a lunch together in honour of a departing friend, in clear breach of the regulations prohibiting gatherings of more than 6 people, and establishing a minimum distance between those seated.

The restaurant was also breaching regulations regarding the use of plastic menus and the use of condiments, as well as other hygiene breaches.

Mazarrón has experienced a significant surge in cases in the last week, and currently has 117 cases active, so the restaurant can now expect to receive a similar level of fine.

Personally, words fail me. It beggars belief that in spite of all the efforts to make sure that information is made available in English so that expats know the rules and more importantly, understand the risks, groups like this still think they're immune and ignore the regulations. Taking into account that the average age of expats living in the region puts the majority of them into the "at risk" group, it's even more surprising.

Vaccines

On Monday the Spanish Minister for Health, Salvador Illa announced that Spain could potentially expect to have about three million doses of the Oxford vaccine available in December, of the 30 million that are already ordered.

But hopes placed on the vaccine being developed by the University of Oxford together with the British pharmaceutical company AstraZeneca  suffered a setback on Wednesday, when one of the participants in the clinical trial suffered a "potentially unexplained" illness that, according to the newspaper The New York Times, is a myelitis that causes an inflammation of the spine.

Vicente Larraga, a researcher at the CSIC's molecular parasitology laboratory says that "it is not at all strange that this could happen" as the tests are carried out precisely to rule out possible side effects. For the moment, the tests have been interrupted and researchers are trying to find out if the origin of the reaction is due to the vaccine or for another reason.

As a consequence of this interruption in the tests, forecasts for when the vaccine will be available must be recalculated again, but it makes it highly unlikely that any vaccines at all will be available in Spain by the end of the year.

Although this is a setback, Larraga says that "it is more important that the vaccines are safe than that they reach the market a month earlier." Click for full article

After the disappointment of the Oxford vaccine trials being suspended, Brussels announced a pre-agreement with Biontech and Pfizer to reserve 200 million doses of anticovid vaccine. Spain is part of the block purchasing scheme to secure vaccines for Spain asap.; Click to read

PCR testing has increased by 10% nationally in the last week, and Spain has undertaken more than 7 million PCR tests to date: Click to read

Some however, see the chance to profit from the covid situation; Five arrested for stealing 3.3 million pieces of medical protection in Madrid.The National Police has detained five men who allegedly stole 3.3 million health protection products, valued at 700,000 euros, from a health service storage warehouse in Leganés, to sell them on the black market.

Among the items stolen were 2,400,000 pairs of gloves, 800,000 surgical masks and 100,000 FFP2 masks.

The five arrested, all of Spanish nationality and between 35 and 52 years old, have a history of similar crimes, according to police sources. Click to read

Care homes:

There is no doubt that this is a massively growing problem, as dozens of cases have been reported throughout the week around Spain.

A report produced by national radio station, Cadena Ser, on Tuesday, which asked all of its regional stations to compile a list of known infections in care homes within their regional areas, stated that at the at point, they had identified 1300 care home workers quarantined with positive covid tests. They also found 3,000 active cases amongst the residents of care homes, but admitted the data was incomplete as no data was officially available for Madrid. Over 21,000 residents of care homes are believed to have actually died during the first wave of the pandemic here in Spain, and these figures are NOT included in the official Covid totals as most of the residents were not PCR tested and therefore their deaths cannot be included in official figures.

On Thursday, La Verdad reported that there were 111 active cases here in the Murcia Region in 9 residencias, and just over the border in Pilar de la Horadada in Alicante, two deaths and 54 cases were reported in just one care home.

Dozens of reports of new cases, deathsa nd quarantines have been published in the national media this week and it's obvious this is going to continue to develop, pushing up the death rate in Spain again.

Monday: The Centro Puerto Luz  care home (Cádiz, Andalucía) reports 127 covid cases. Click for article

Covid Murcia:

On Friday 4th September the Murcia region had 4,432 active cases.

On Friday 11th September the total had risen to 5,669 cases, a rise of 1237 in the number of cases ACTIVE in the last week.

If we go back a month, there were only 1081 active cases on 11th August, so the number of cases actually active has increased by 4,588 in a month.

A month ago, the total number of cases diagnosed in the region since the start of the pandemic was 4,799; now it's 12,478, a rise of 7,679, INCLUDING rapid tests (1706 in total from the start of the pandemic which are not included as cases).

For a region our size, this is a substantial increase and a substantial number of cases, so vigilance is necessary.

Economy

It's inevitable that the fallout will continue to affect many sectors. Eurostat figures highlight the scale of the problem in Europe, and Spain is the worst affected in every aspect of their economic report. Even if economic data is difficult to digest, the graphic above pretty much says it all.

This is feeding down into many sectors and the effects are being felt particularly in the tourism sector.

This week the body representing the hotels and hostelry sector in the Murcia Region, Hostemur, said that 90% of the coastal hotels and hotels catering for the tourism sector in the region would close for the winter due to the restrictions being placed against Spain which has decimated the tourism sector. He said that the volume of foreign tourists this summer had been "non-existent".

On Friday 800 businesses from the hotelry sector and their suppliers held a drive-through protest in Murcia city to complain about the measures being taken which reduce their capacity to earn a living. Although there is a great deal of sympathy for the plight of these small business owners, there is also a quiet consensus amongst the public that gatherings in bars and restaurants, some of which have been featured above, are a contributing factor to the spread of the virus, so although they want to support the sector, there is also fear associated with the every day act of supporting local hostelries. There will be major job losses in the sector as we move into October, and the hotels close, and all those businesses supplying products and services to the sector are bracing themselves for a big fall in revenue as the mushroom cloud starts to spread.

It's also visible in articles such as Renfe slashing its train service prices to Madrid and Barcelona by 57% this week; but how many want to book a weekend away when we don´t know whether it's safe to go to the major cities with covid breaking out or if the area we choose will be confined. The images of yet more UK holidaymakers having their Portugese holiday ruined is enough to make anyone feel cautious about booking a foreign holiday again.

Other news:

Turtles: Loggerhead turtle nest located in Calnegre with two hatchlings alive. Earlier in the week two baby loggerhead turtles were found on the Calnegre shoreline in Lorca, indicating that there was a nest somewhere in the area.On the third search, the nest was located, in an area the environmental experts who found it immediately knew to be unsuitable, the chances being that a high percentage of the eggs would have failed to hatch, as was the case. Miraculously, two little hatchlings were found alive when the nest was opened, weak, but alive. Click to read

Migration:130 irregular Algerian migrants arrive in Cartagena; 79 in a fishing boat; Click to read

Decomposing corpse found just off San Pedro del Pinatar by local fishing boat. The deceased was unidentifiable and a DNA test will now try to ascertain his identity. Click to read

Albudeite man rescued by helicopter after falling 20 metres down a ravine trying to rescue a dog: Click to read

Spanish Civil War projectiles found by man walking his dog in Murcia. Click to read

It is surprisingly common for remnants of the Spanish Civil War to turn up in unlikely locations and they are often found by workmen digging holes in areas such as Cartagena, which was heavily bombarded during the Civil War.

If you are interested in military history, Cartagena has two interesting museums worth visiting; The Military Museum, and the Civil War Air Raid Shelter.

A mortar grenade and an aviation projectile, dating from the Spanish Civil War have been deactivated after their discovery near to Cuevas del Norte, in the Murcian district of Sangonera la Verde.

The devices were found by a man walking his dog, who called the Guardia Civíl.

The artifacts were in a good state of conservation, but in devices of this nature the explosive material inside can be unstable, and moving them is dangerous, so specialist bomb disposal experts were called in from GEDEX-NRBQ (Specialist Group in Deactivation of Explosive Devices and Nuclear, Radiological, Biological and Chemical Defense) who neutralized the 2 devices in a nearby area, with the proper security measures in place.

Renfe re-establishes rail traffic on Reguerón to Sucina line. The repairs have cost more than 5 million euros following the Gota Fría rains last year: Click to read

Panel of Experts proposes actions in 13 stretches of channels that cause flood risks in the Mar Menor.

The basin that discharges into the Mar Menor covers an area of 1,235 km2 and water flows in across a distance of more than 60 kilometers, "so that floods can occur with rainfall produced in places far from the one that suffers its consequences" they said.

The panel of experts constituted by the regional Government last year after the September Gota Fría to examine ways of minimising the risk of floods
in the Region of Murcia, has highlighted 13 stretches of water channels on which it believes improvements could be made to reduce flooding around the Mar Menor.

The panel proposes a series of actions on 13 stretches of channels that cause "severe risks" of flooding in the Mar Menor, which mainly correspond to to the Ramblas de la Maraña, Cobatillas, La Higuera, El Albujón, el Miedo and la Carrasquilla.

The experts have analyzed the main channel that crosses the plain where the Campo de Cartagena and the municipalities of the Mar Menor are located, the La Rambla del Albujón, which has a length of 42 km.

Outside of the structure of the rambla the natural water run-offs lack permanent structure and are formed by a series of channels and natural run-offs; should these be altered, as has occurred through various developments and agricultural activity, then the balance of the flow is interrupted and the water runs off into different areas, forming pools of excess water and flooding.

The Minister of Development and Infrastructure, Díez de Revenga explained that the experts suggest " focusing on the problem as a whole, addressing it as a whole, from the top to the bottom of the basin", because the basin that discharges into the Mar Menor has an area of 1,235 km2 and a distance of more than 60 kilometers, "so that floods can occur with rainfall produced in places far from the one that suffers its consequences" as was clearly witnessed last September when more than 200 litres per square meter fell inland in the Torre Pacheco municipality, and subsequently flooded large areas around the Mar Menor when millions of litres of mud-laden water overflowed into the surrounding urbanisations and countryside.

The experts counsel that the flow of the water should be correctly directed and channelled to minimise the floods, and this can be done by working on 13 separate sections of channels.

The panel maintains that work in the water channels would help to reinforce the security of the residents of Los Alcázares, San Javier, San Pedro del Pinatar, Cartagena and Torre Pacheco. Click for full article

Regional government will appeal against CHS measures to protect Cartagena aquifer:

The complicated topic of the recovery of the Mar Menor and exactly who has the competence for each of the many aspects of this complex topic continues this week with a report on Thursday that the regional Government has agreed to file a contentious-administrative appeal against the agreements adopted at the meeting of the Governing Board of the CHS, Segura Hydrographic Confederation, on July 16th regarding the contamination of the water aquifer beneath the Campo de Cartagena and the measures to be taken in order to protect it.

The precautionary measures approved by the Segura Hydrographic Confederation to protect the Mar Menor principally affect 1,190 hectares of irrigated land, located in a strip 1,500 meters deep, running in from the shoreline, the so-called 'Zone 0'.

The proposal also included a series of restrictions for the rest of the agricultural activity in the area of the Campo de Cartagena affecting the aquifer, some 1,190 hectares of land, which must reduce the nitrate load on the crops grown, which varies according to the crop. According to the CHS, 20 hectares are crops grown in plastic greenhousing, 967 are basic green crops and 203 are citrus plantations.

The declaration prohibited the application of any type of organic and inorganic fertilisers, permitted the continution of fertilization in existing woody crops for only six months and provided for measures to be implemented within a period of no more than three months.

The regional Government has since passed its own Mar Menor Protection Plan, which follows some of the same measures, but not all, and there has been disagreement between the two bodies over who has the jurisdiction to apply the regulations. The CHS had prepared an extensive report about the level of nitrate contamination in the natural aquifer water storage beneath the vast area covered by the Campo de Cartagena and after correctly publishing and making the repot available for public scrutiny for the specified time period, had called a meeting of the Governing Board of the CHS at short notice.

The Regional Government maintains that there was no time to study the report produced by the CHS because the documentation was submitted after the deadline (2 days before a meeting), considering it a “violation of an essential procedure” and therefore rendering the measure adopted null and void.

The main purpose of the July meeting of the Hydrographic Confederation was to declare the groundwater mass in Campo de Cartagena at risk from continued pollution by nitrates due to the ongoing intensive irrigated farming in the area, delimiting the perimeters of the affected areas and establishing precautionary measures for the area.

The casual observer could be forgiven for thinking that this is just petty party politics, but the root of the problem lies in culpability. The EU has told the CHS in no uncertain terms that it must act to reduce nitrate pollution in not only the Cartagena aquifer, but also other areas of the country as well, as the levels of nitrates in these subterranean water bodies exceed European limits, so the CHS is keen to act and comply with the EU directive, otherwise it faces the risk of prosecution.

This is also tied in to the complicated question of accountability as both the CHS and the regional government are being held as partially culpable for the algal problems which are now plaguing the Mar Menor; a criminal investigation has already gathered substantial evidence to indicate that both bodies either turned a blind eye with the knowledge that irregularities were being committed or failed to fulfil their obligations to correctly monitor the agricultural and urban practices around the lagoon, in which case both are open to potential criminal prosecution.

Added to which is the ongoing disagreement between the regional and national governments over who will ultimately pay for the corrective measures which must now be undertaken urgently, the regional government unhappy that the CHS “pipped them at the post” by itself passing legislation which was complementary to, but not the same as, the legislation passed by the regional government, just days later.
Complicated?
Absolutely.
 

Thank you for your support. Have a good week!