when they arrive they find a field

The Basque Country has encountered a problem curious: urban planners who move to the countryside attracted by its lifestyle and end up desperate because of that, because of how people live in the countryside. It sounds like gibberish, but it is a reality so present in the community that the regional government has come to denounce it. “People come to towns thinking that they are a haven of peace where you can only hear birds and everything is green, they come with the wrong idea,” warns Iker Aguitrre, from the Union of Farmers and Ranchers of Álava (UAGA).

The problem is that these clashes add (even) more pressure to rural areas.

What has happened? That Euskadi is proving to what extent it is difficult to repopulate rural areas with people from the cities. Does a few daysduring a parliamentary intervention, counselor Amaia Barredo acknowledged her concern about how the arrival of urban populations seeking bucolic environments, havens of peace and silence are affecting some rural areas, and in reality they find something different: farms with tractors, cattle ranchers and cattle.

“Agrarian activity has become residual in many rural areas, even annoying, and we are beginning to have other problems derived from the expectations of the urban population that is looking in the countryside for other externalities of the landscape, of air quality, which are seriously altering the future of rural areas,” lament the regional leader in statements collected by the SER network.

What is it referring to? Barredo has not limited himself to pointing out the problem. Also has gone into detailsciting cases in which the false expectations of people who arrive in the field collide with the realities found there. “We will have to focus on why a livestock farm or poultry activity bothers a town or why sheep pass through the town and stain, we already have a council to talk about it,” lamented the Basque councilor. “It’s funny, but that’s how it is.”

Curiously, and despite the concern that the matter arouses in the Government, the issue is not included in the Rural Development Strategy of Euskadi, which just presented Barredo herself. The document outlines a series of measures (12 lines of action and 38 specific actions) to transform the Basque countryside in the remainder of the decade, focusing on issues such as housing, mobility or health.

Is she the only one to report it? No. Barredo’s words have had repercussions due to her position, but she has not been the only one to publicly warn of how the arrival of city residents can “seriously alter the future of rural areas.” Iker Aguirre, director of UAGA, launched a similar message these days: “People come thinking that this is a haven of peace where only the birds can be heard. They come with the wrong idea of ​​what the countryside is.”

Although “the majority” of people who arrive from urban areas end up “integrating”, the problem comes from those neighbors who move with a wrong image of what life is like in rural areas. “Here you get up early, the tractors go from one place to another, there are smells, noises…”. And in case there were any doubts about the importance of integrating, Aguirre give an example in the opposite direction: “I may feel uncomfortable in the center of Vitoria because of the traffic, and those who come from the city have assimilated those noises; but those from the countryside saturate them.”

Are they specific frictions? It doesn’t seem like it. And not only because the issue is serious enough for the industry advisor to recognize it. In an interview With the SER, Aguirre explains that complaints have reached the UAGA and does not rule out that there are “many more” of which the association is not aware.

The reason for the lawsuits? The leader speaks of clashes caused by issues such as loose dogs that scare cattle or complaints caused by the presence of livestock excrement on rural roads or even the noise made by cowbells. “We all try to adapt, but there are limits,” he says.

Is it a problem? Yes. And not only because of the discomfort it generates or the extra pressure it adds to agricultural operations. Frictions can also complicate the transfer of population from cities to rural areas, one of the lifelines of ’emptied Spain’. It is not a minor issue if we remember that in the country there are more than 1,200 locations that risk “disappearing” from the map, with just over a hundred residents registered, a reality to which the Basque Country is not foreign.

Precisely the strategic plan that the Basque Country has just launched seeks that settling and working in rural areas “continues to be a real and attractive option.”

In statements to The Country Aguirre warns that friction between farms and newly arrived rural residents has already translated into real problems for some Spanish ranchers. “There have been towns where years ago there was an influx of many people from outside and the sheep farms had a lot of problems because the sheep shit on the roads,” he recalls. “It has to be protected and perhaps we have to educate that the countryside is not idyllic.”

Does it only happen in the Basque Country? No. A few years ago a town in León it was news because it was proposed that ranchers had to collect the dung from their cows. The proposal generated such controversy that the authorities backed down, but at its core there was the same problem: the tensions between livestock activity and other uses of the territory, such as residential or even tourism.

It is something they know well in France, where they have even promoted a specific law to protect the countryside from urbanites. A similar idea was raised a few months ago in Asturias: approve a standard that safeguards the rural environment and its traditional activities (including issues such as the mooing of cows or the smell of manure) from the arrival of people from the cities.

Image | Laurent Gence

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