Yet another report of illegal water wells. This one is 51 wells in Mazarrón, Murcia

https://www.h50.es/investigadas-18-p...zarron-murcia/

Another arsonist arrested. The fire occurred around twelve months ago. A 62-year-old man, who had been a forest firefighter and who on the date of the event was working on prevention work, was arrested.
https://www.granadahoy.com/granada/G...825617752.html

On the 15th August ( national holiday), I saw a red car crawling around our house. They ( two people from the Junta de Andalucia) came back and asked me if I could move the pile of brushwood I was working on. He explained they were checking if any of the land was irrigated or has been in the last five years. Their aerial photo had one sq kilometre highlighted with our land bang in the middle.

They might have found some sinners. Our village “ alcalde” says they might get a fine.

The joke is that apart from the cost of two people working on dia de Assuncion, they could have fined 20 folk with ease . Just look for a “ road crossing” two inch wide channel cut across the road and then very badly repaired to get a water pipe across. I dare say that would create them too much work.

You wouldn't think so but all the land in our large valley is secano.

Yes, a very poor harvest in prospect.

haveIf you have land that was secano, and install a water supply from a legal group of irrigators and paid to buy your share of the cooperative, does that make your land now designated as irrigated? Similarly does the same apply if you dig a legal, registered well on your land?

No such scheme in our area. There were several attempts but they were thwarted by eco considerations.

If you apply to dig a legal well, I am of the belief that you wouldn’t get permission to use the water for irrigation. Ours was for the house, garden and livestock. We were given an annual quota. Quite generous but not if you are watering trees each and every day.

We saw the well drilling co , drilling another borehole. Why doesnt the Junta de A insist no paperwork no can drill? He would go out of business overnight but……..

they do. the borehole we had (its not been used for years, although its still functional) at the car park was "10 grand cash, and i come at night, no licence".

I cant help thinking that a giant machine some 20 metres high, with lights all over it during the middle of the night, making all that noise.. would attract alot more attention than doing it in the day time.

Well floods and storms have arrived.
https://www.20minutos.es/noticia/516...ro-importante/

It rained for about 30mins this morning... Nothing to write home about...
Almost cloudless sky here in the mountains inland of Albir now, temp got to 27c earlier, was nice after the relentless 36c plus everyday...
BUT back to hot again in the week......

Will be going to Spain next week Sunday. Checked and right now between 28-30c near Lloret, so not much change. Even in Ireland we are supposed to reach 24/25c next week and just posted some pictures in the wildfire thread. Nowhere safe from them these days.

Red alerts for Madrid La Mancha and Toledo
Yellow alerts for much of the country.

theres been tornados in torremilinos and nerja / torrox costa !

i read that olives were down to under 50% on last year. explains why olive oil is now 10€ a litre.

Yep really bad, our friends who live further up the mountain usually get something like 140kilos of olives from their trees (the local Co-Op harvest them) and this year they reckon maybe less than half..
They dont do it for the money as they get bottled oil back, but I always look forward to the small bottle we get each year as its always from the first pressing. No good to cook with, but to use for dressing and to dip bread into, it cannot be beaten....

... and last year was terrible due to the heat. We had none on our trees last year - this year we have a few kilos

And on the news now it shows the devastation to crops due to the storms last night. All this means that olive oil will continue to increase in price As a result they call it the liquid gold. Apparently the producers are having to beef up security as last week a few places had their tanks stolen.