Doñana overshadows the first year of the 'absolute' of Juanma Moreno

“We have made history”. Three words, pronounced on the night of June 19, 2022 by Juanma Moreno, condense the magnitude of the milestone that the Andalusian Popular Party achieved just one year ago today. Not only did he win the regional elections that day -Javier Arenas had already won them in 2016-, but he achieved what he had never even dared to dream of before, an absolute majority at the level of what he achieved, in his best days, the PSOE. “A dream”, as the president of the Junta and leader of the popular Andalusians also defined it that night at the regional PP headquarters in Seville.

That indisputable triumph also meant leaving behind pacts or alliances like those that had been necessary in his first legislature.. Neither Ciudadanos, who was a partner in a coalition government and who literally disappeared, nor Vox.. All power for the PP and for its leader who, moreover, became one of the national benchmarks of his party on his own merits, especially after the fall of Pablo Casado's leadership and his replacement by Alberto Núñez Feijóo, with the that maintained, and maintains, a total harmony.

This same Monday, in the Andalusian Parliament, representatives of various agricultural and conservation organizations let their voices be heard with a common argument: their frontal opposition to the bill to regulate irrigation next to the Doñana National Park. They did it at the invitation of the parliamentary group For Andalusia and after not having been able to do so in the commission that processes the legislative initiative promoted by the PP and Vox.

Almost at the same time, the general secretary of the Andalusian PSOE, Juan Espadas, asked the president of the Junta for a formal meeting to discuss, precisely, the future of Doñana and the expansion of the irrigable area in the so-called North Crown of the natural space. .

It is no coincidence that on the day that marks one year of that unprecedented triumph of the PP, the spotlight turns to Doñana, which in recent months has become a battlefield where the central and regional governments have clashed with all their weapons, including insults, threats and disqualifications.

Year I of the absolute majority of Juanma Moreno will inevitably be marked by the controversy over the irrigation of Doñana, by that bill presented just a few months ago by the PP and Vox with the declared objective of responding to the “rights records” of the farmers who were left out of the first management plan for the area, the Doñana Crown Forest Plan of 2014, and who have been demanding, since then, that their soils be declared irrigable.

Ecologists speak of some 2,000 additional hectares -with the need for water that goes hand in hand- and the Andalusian president himself estimated last week the number of hectares to be regularized at 700, but, in any case, he is not only facing rejection by the central government, but also that of the main environmental groups, scientists and even the European Commission due to the pernicious effects that it can have on Doñana, on the masses of groundwater that feed its humidities and that are in a delicate situation, to put it mildly. .

The controversy and the negative international impact of the initiative -with campaigns calling for a boycott of red fruits from Huelva in Germany, the main market- has not only placed Moreno and his government at the center of criticism, but also He has come to question one of the pillars on which he announced that he was going to revolve his mandate: the “green revolution”.

Healing, the other stone

Although Doñana has not been the only stone on which the PP executive has stumbled in his first year as absolute.

The health situation, especially in primary care, has been a recurring headache for the first solo government of the Popular Party. Anger, boredom, rallies, demonstrations and even some strikes set off the alarms and a million-dollar agreement was necessary, last March, to deactivate a time bomb that threatened to explode Moreno in the middle of an election year.

And, even so, one of the main unions in the sector, the Andalusian Medical Union, keeps its arms raised and has refused to sign peace and maintains the mobilizations.

Health, but above all Doñana, has overshadowed the management balance of this first year of the second popular legislature in Andalusia, in which six laws have been approved (the 2023 budgets, the Early Care Law, the modification of the Emergency Law, the Circular Economy Law, the Andalusian Flamenco Law and the Public Function Law, to which two others will be added currently in process, the Law for the Creation of the Superior and Technical Bodies of the Intervention and Audit of the Administration of the Board and the Law of Local Police.

Another medal that the Moreno executive can hang in these twelve months is the social peace achieved with the signing of the Social and Economic Pact for the Andalusian Impulse, translated into 8,900 million euros, with the main unions and with the Confederation of Employers of Andalusia (CEA).

The sixth tax cut since Moreno came to power or the successive decrees that have been approved to fight the drought or the projects to promote green hydrogen and the weight of the industry within the regional GDP are other measures adopted in this anus.

The President of the Board, Juanma Moreno, greets the King this Monday in Madrid. EFE

All in all, neither the health system nor Doñana have made a dent electorally, neither in Moreno nor in the Andalusian PP, as shown by the results of the recent municipal elections, with a victory as resounding as that of 19-J in Andalusia or the latest polls of the Centra, where the PP continues to lead the intention to vote and the score of the political leaders.

Unlike what happened just a year ago, the leader of the Andalusian PP has not lavished himself on big speeches. The anniversary has passed without pain or glory, with the president of the Board in Madrid, at the reception that the King and Queen have offered to King Abdalá of Jordan and only in a tweet has he broken that silence to congratulate himself on “one of the greatest impulses” in the history of Andalusia and emphasize that “now our community competes with the best”.

“We still have a lot to do,” Moreno has finished. Among other things, to pacify Doñana, the great shadow of the year I of the absolute.