The 1956 Law and the drainage project of Antela

The Law of 27 December 1956 entrusted the Instituto Nacional de Colonización with the "conquest for agricultural and livestock production" of the lands of the Lagoa de Antela, and the project that implemented it became, within a few years, the definitive draining of the wetland. This page details what the law and project said, the works and the figures, following the review by the Sociedade Galega de Historia Natural (SGHN) ^[1]. The full chronology of earlier attempts is in The draining of the Lagoa de Antela.

The immediate background

The lagoon survived the first half of the 20th century despite the Law of 24 July 1918, promulgated under Alfonso XIII with Francisco Cambó as Minister of Development. That law provided for concessions, aid, subsidies of up to 50 % of the budget and tax exemptions for any corporation or company domiciled in Spain that promoted the draining of lagoons or marshy land over 100 hectares ^[1]. There was a project by F. Conde-Valvís in 1937 and a failed attempt by the company "Agrícola de Antela, S.A." ^[1]. The SGHN deduces that even official facilities were not enough to attract private initiative, probably because of doubts about profitability after the series of 19th-century failures ^[1]. The mentality of the time is captured in the Memoria of Canon Juan Manuel Bedoya (1831), who called the lagoon an "unclean, useless and harmful pool" ^[2].

The law: thirteen articles

The «Ley de 27 de diciembre de 1956 sobre saneamiento y colonización de la laguna de Antela, sita en la provincia de Orense» (quote) has 13 articles, 113 lines and 1,528 words ^[1]. According to the SGHN’s analysis:

• it stresses the agricultural and livestock interest of the draining and mentions no human-health problems;
• it estimates the area to be drained at "about 4,000 ha", 750 more than were later delimited, and includes Porqueira among the concellos to which Antela belongs;
• it makes no reference to environmental values or to the traditional uses that would be lost;
• it concentrates on legal aspects and leaves technical ones to the delimitation of the area, the General Colonisation Plan and the Coordinated Works Plan ^[1].

The planned sequence was: a delimitation proposal within two months (art. 2), one month for objections (art. 3), approval of the delimitation (art. 4), drafting of the General Colonisation Plan (art. 8) and approval by decree of that plan, which would set the deadline for the Coordinated Works Plan (art. 9) ^[1].

Zapata Tejedor’s project

In June 1957 the Instituto Nacional de Colonización commissioned the project from the civil engineer Francisco Zapata Tejedor, who delivered it within the required two months. In the report he wrote that, "owing to time pressure and the limited ground surveys", the solution was "improvable" ^[1].

The possibility of draining Antela (at 620 m altitude) by diverting the water to the Arnoia river (at 600 m) through tunnels was studied, but dismissed for its higher cost and because the Limia river would lose the inflow from 162 km² of its headwaters. A project similar to the one attempted since the time of magistrate Toubes, 130 years earlier, was chosen ^[1]. The project had three phases ^[1]:

1. Drainage and drying. Channelling of the lower stretch of the Limia river (3.5 km, 34 m wide at the bed), an outlet from the lagoon to the Limia (over 7 km, 17 m) and a network of main drainage canals in the lagoon (11 km, between 4 and 9 m wide).
2. Conversion to irrigation. A reservoir at the head of the Arnoia, at Riobó, 9 km of diversion canal to the Antela plain and 42 km of irrigation canals.
3. Colonisation of the "reclaimed" lands.

The works (1958–1964)

Work began on 17 September 1958, before the lands had been delimited or the General Colonisation Plan required by the law approved ^[1]. The three months planned for delimiting the area became almost six years: Decree 2336/1962, of 20 September, approved the definitive delimitation and set the area at 3,243.76 ha, of which 54.44 were private property, 2,161.33 private property and common land subject to expropriation and 1,027.97 public domain. The SGHN notes that, by allowing works without the General Plan approved by the Council of Ministers, the decree implicitly acknowledges that the law was not complied with ^[1]. In May 1962 the definitive draining began, although the channelling was "almost finished" in 1963 ^[1].

Budget and investment

The budget planned in 1959 totalled 435,228,618 pesetas of the time. The Riobó reservoir, the main irrigation canals, the expropriations and the rural settlements were never carried out, and the network of ditches was replaced by pumping stations on the main canal-drain ^[1]. For the first phase only the final investment was compiled: 72,282,871 pesetas between 1958 and 1964, with annual allocations of 12 million set by decrees of 1960 and 1961 ^[1]. The SGHN estimates that, discounting the works not done, the public investment would today be equivalent to at least about €19,661 per hectare ^[1].

After the draining

The General Colonisation Plan of the zone of national interest of the Lagoa de Antela was not approved until Decree 2144/1972, of 6 July, almost 16 years after the law and 14 after the start of the works. The decree acknowledges that until then works had been carried out without setting the applicable economic regime and that of the assigned works only the rectification and channelling of the Limia river and the canal-drain, both Public Works, were recorded as finished; none of those assigned to Agriculture was completely carried out ^[3]. An article in La Vanguardia of 18 September 1968, ten years and one day after the start of the works, criticised the project’s budget overruns ^[3].

The agricultural conversion works, begun by the Instituto Nacional de Colonización, were continued by the IRYDA, created by Law 35/1971 ^[1]. In 1991 the Xunta de Galicia finished the process by granting ownership of the plots to the concession-holding farmers at 43,066 pesetas per hectare, payable over 15 years ^[1]. The SGHN also stresses that farming in Antela always had limitations: a frost-free period of only 123 days (frost on average 133 days a year) and acid, very sandy, infertile soils ^[2].

A Roman draining?

Tradition, reported by Rivas (1985), places the first draining in the first third of the 2nd century, under Emperor Hadrian. The SGHN cautions that the most recent research has found no documentary evidence, and proposes two hypotheses for the supposed failure: deterioration of the drains or exhaustion of the fertility of the drained lands ^[2].

Links

• Lagoa de Antela
• The draining of the Lagoa de Antela
• The original lagoon
• The Lagoa de Antela today

Sources

1. Sociedade Galega de Historia Natural, «1956: comezo do fin de Antela». https://sghn.org/1956-comenzo-fin-antela/ (versión en inglés: https://sghn.org/1528-words-to-drain-antela/)
2. Sociedade Galega de Historia Natural, «Intentos de desougamento da Lagoa de Antela». https://sghn.org/intentos-desougamento-lagoa-antela/
3. Sociedade Galega de Historia Natural, Sección Antela, «O desaugamento de 1956» (páxina web antiga, século XX). http://www.sghn.org/Seccion_Antela/Galego/Seculo_XX.html