The five brothers were sentenced to 3.5 years in prison and fined 1.9 million euros for illegally pumping 19.4 million cubic meters of water from the Doñana nature park between 2008 and 2013.
The water theft was on such a scale that the groundwater level of the aquifer dropped by up to 15 meters, said an expert assigned to the Public Prosecutor's Office. “You can compare it to thousands of football fields covered by one meter of water. It’s so huge that it’s hard to imagine the volume,” said the expert.
It is the first time in Spain, which has increasingly suffered from heat waves and drought in recent years, that trials for this kind of environmental violation have been held.
The five brothers had already been penalized between 1997 and 2008 through thirteen different procedures and millions in fines, which they tried to avoid paying for years. This time, the court in Seville had enough and demanded prison sentences.
The vast Doñana nature reserve in Andalusia is one of Europe’s largest wetlands and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The reserve is rapidly drying out due to climate change and massive water theft for agriculture. Farmers and gardeners irrigate their crops through illegal wells tapping a subterranean water basin in Doñana.
The Spanish World Wildlife Fund has mapped more than 1,000 illegal wells in recent years.