THE  Janda LAGOON

The Barbate, Celemín and Almodóvar rivers, and streams such as the Culebra, Trimpacho, Juan de Sevilla or the Águila, fed the wetland forming an intrinsic part of the drainage network of the Barbate basin. During the months of maximum rainfall, all the lagoons flooded and between the end of spring and the beginning of summer the sheets of water began to diminish until they were reduced to muddy terrain with the presence of free water only in the central part of the known Janda. with the place name of Charco de los Ansares.

Of the importance that this wetland had for birds, numerous testimonies have been collected throughout history. The oldest are those of the cave paintings found in numerous shelters and natural caves in the mountains that surround La Janda, in which representations of cranes, flamingos, bustards, geese, swans and avocets are recognizable, as well as a multitude of other animals and human figures. Later during the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries many writers and travelers like Ponz, Agustín de Orozco, lrby, Verner, or Chapman and Buck They reflected in their writings the ornithological interest of these lagoons.

Despite the recognized values of the wetland, the irrational drying fever of Spanish developmentalism also reached La Janda and after successive frustrated attempts in the 1960s, it was finally managed to dry it out in order to cultivate its fertile soils. Engineering works, channels, a drainage tunnel and the construction of dams on the Celemín Almodóvar and Barbate rivers, profoundly altered the original wetland that Despite this, it continues to resist disappearing and floods repeatedly in years with intense episodes of precipitation, destroying crops, recovering its former domains for a few days, revealing something of its old glory and demonstrating the feasibility of its regeneration if there was a will for it.

Today, the La Janda depression constitutes a vast area dedicated mainly to agriculture, in which rice, corn, cotton, sorghum, leguminous crops predominate and, to a lesser degree, pastures where brava and retinta breeds are fed. . These fields, surrounded by mountains covered with cork oaks, wild olive groves and Mediterranean scrub of great ecological value, are crossed by a series of drainage channels and old natural channels in which water and lacustrine vegetation remain all or most of the year, constituting these few remnants the only thing that remains of the once extensive wetland.

Despite the intense transformations it has undergone, and although it has undoubtedly lost much of its exceptional value -as reflected in the fact that important species such as the crane, bustard or bittern have disappeared as nesters- the Janda continues to have exceptional value for birds, which is why it constitutes a wetland of international importance and one of the reference destinations for ornithological tourism in southern Spain. Thus, just by way of example, suffice it to say that more than 2,500 cranes winter in the area every year, it is a habitual breeding ground for large eagles such as the Iberian imperial or Bonelli's eagle, griffon vultures and Egyptian vultures, an obligatory migratory passage for thousands of storks white and black birds of prey and passerines and a breeding ground for thousands of herons, ducks and other aquatic birds.

Definitely no less relevant than the ecological values of the Janda are its cultural and historical values that constitute the heritage of the populations that have settled on its shores since the Paleolithic obtaining their resources from the lagoons and developing forms of life deeply linked to them. In addition to the previously mentioned cave paintings found in the numerous shelters and caves in the mountains that surround La Janda, among which It is worth noting the well-known Tajo de las Figuras, there are also many here megalithic monuments such as dolmens, menhirs and anthropomorphic tombs, as well as deposits that testify to the first agricultural settlements already in the Neolithic. In the historical context It is also noteworthy that according to various authors On the shores of the wetland, the transcendental Battle of La Janda took place in 711 between the troops of the Umayyad Caliphate led by Tariq and the Visigoths under the command of King Rodrigo that gave way to the brilliant expansion of Muslim culture throughout the Iberian Peninsula that would last for seven centuries.



These exceptional values ecological, cultural and historical aspects of La Janda together with the landscapes of its coast and mountains They must be the basis on which to sustain a regional economy with sustainability criteria far removed from the current productive model. highly focused on sun and beach tourism and on intensive crops that are less and less ecologically and socially profitable that are only maintained thanks to subsidies received from the Common Agricultural Policy of the European Union.

In view of such outstanding values, the ecological recovery of the Janda lagoons and its historical and cultural heritage should be a priority objective for society and public administrations. The possibility of undertaking said recovery is facilitated by the fact that the lands of the old wetland are publicly owned since, prior to its desiccation, they were defined in 1946 as members of the hydraulic public domain. Said demarcation, carried out in order to be able to grant the lands in administrative concession to a private company that, in exchange for exploiting them agriculturally for 99 years, would have to assume the costs of drying up, was ratified by a Supreme Court Judgment and continues to be fully valid. Subsequently, Through a 1964 Decree, the State declared the concession granted on these public lands redeemed, but in practiceca never came to make its possession recovery effective, allowing from then until today the private use of them.

The beginning of the recovery of the Janda wetland therefore inevitably happens because the Government of Spain and the Junta de Andalucía, both with powers in the management and administration of the hydraulic public domain, exercise these powers and recover possession of the more than 6,000 hectares public that irregularly remain occupied. For this, with the initial impulse of the Association of Friends of the Laguna de la Janda, various entities and social groups at the local level and in 2018 joined their efforts in the "Campaign for the Recovery of the Lagunas de la Janda". As a result of the protest, informative, administrative and legal actions carried out in this campaign, it has been achieved that both the Provincial Council of Cádiz and three of the four municipalities through which the wetland extended (Barbate, Medina-Sidonia and Tarifa) have Approved, without a single vote against, plenary motions urging the State and the Junta de Andalucía to recover, restore and protect these public lands, having Investigation files and ex officio recovery of the public domain have already begun by both administrations which, hopefully sooner rather than later, will have to be resolved andIt will allow everyone to recover this emblem of our natural heritage that, despite the mistreatment and neglect to which it has been subjected, stoically resists disappearing.