The Southeastern Desert.

One of the charms of the south-east of Spain is its intriguing desert. Dry hills festooned with a few scrub bushes and a rabbit or two. There are few habitations and hardly anything moving in the scorching heat beyond perhaps a thirsty cyclist and a watchful vulture.

Nothing much grows in the land around Tabernas in Almería (Spaghetti Western country) and up towards Granada, or along the way towards Murcia. To see it from the air is to see the only true desert of Europe.

Here and there among the million hectares of desert we can find some olive plantations lining the minor provincial roads, fed with water from the overstretched aquifers, while the stressed earth under the plastic farms of Nijar and El Ejido to the west is pushed to its limit, filled with chemicals and tired indeed of the very life it creates in such abundance. 

The official spread of the farms, quoted since 2004 as around 30,000 hectares, is understandably erroneous, and local farmers will quote more likely figures of 75,000 hectares under plastic. Plastic which, once perished, is now no longer sent off to China. Now, most of it is dealt with in unsatisfactory ways (90% is not recycled says Greenpeace) – ploughed under, left to rot, chucked into dry riverbeds – and from there to the sea (where some of it ends up, apparently, poisoning dolphins) or sent to official dumps (which often mysteriously catch fire).

El País has published a major study on how to attempt to arrest the desertification of the region, with some brave agriculturists trying out various crops such as almonds, olive, pistachio plus some reforestation (photos here) as the poor soil is lost to erosion through wind and occasional washes of floodwater. The article looks at foreign philanthropists and NGOs such as Alvelal, Commonland and Sunseed Desert Technology.

That the land is bad is no surprise. ‘...The content of organic matter in the agricultural soil of the Altiplano ranges between 0.38% and 1.5%, which is why much of it does not reach the usual organic matter rate of 1.5% minimum, according to data from the University of Almería. These soils lose an average of 1.8 millimetres of thickness per year from the most superficial layer, the most fertile, which means 20 tons of land per hectare. In recent years rainfall has been scarce, between 200 and 400mm per year.

Then there’s the problem of the depopulation of the towns: Vélez Blanco – in the sierras where Almería, Granada and Murcia meet – is given as an example. It has lost five thousand souls from its 1950 census, with now just two thousand inhabitants left.

Climate change, hotter summers and Spain’s growing desertification have been a source of worry from some time. We end with an article from El Mundo from July of 2017 titled: ‘By 2090, Spain will be the new Sahara’. It says: ‘Water is scarce, heat waves break records ... and Spain dries up. But this scorching summer is only a foretaste of the future: in 2090, the desert will have swallowed half of the Peninsula, from Lisbon to Alicante, according to a study by 'Science'’.