'We don't have money to go to the bar; our life is to come to the allotment and now we feel like we're superfluous'

Miguel remembers that when he was 16 years old there were already vegetable gardens next to the Arroyo del Pantano in Benalmádena. Now he is 70. He remembers that in those years the area was a forest of brambles through which it was impossible to pass. "Anyone who retired from the village would come here, choose a piece of land, clean it well and plant their vegetable garden." When that person was too old to keep going back and forth to the garden, "they would pass it on to a relative or a friend".

More than half a century has passed since then and this tradition has been maintained all this time. So much so that now it is estimated that there are a total of one hundred allotments cultivated along the banks of the stream.

Despite their long history, all of them face an uncertain future. That forest of brambles has now become a pedestrian path, which starts in Arroyo de la Miel and goes all the way to the coast. A path that allows a pleasant walk in the shade of the trees and with allotments on either side of it. However, other vegetable gardens are located on the land where the Al-Baytar Park is to be developed, one of the municipality's star projects, a 22-hectare green lung.

That is one of the major stumbling blocks facing the tradition of growing in this area. The other is water. All the residents who cultivate a piece of land use the water that flows down the stream for irrigation. A few months ago, Seprona appeared there for the first time in response to a complaint filed by a private individual. According to Eva, a market gardener in the area, ten of them (she is one of the people affected) have been reported and accused of water usurpation.

"The water flows down the stream on its way to the sea, we are not taking it away from anyone, in fact, we all think that it is the water released by the golf course (located above the gardens), because one day you find that there is hardly any water and the next day it gushes down," she says. In any case, she and the others are aware that the time has come to regularise their situation and they are willing to move their plots from one point to another, and also to pay for the water they consume, if necessary. What they did not imagine, after so many years, was a complaint to Seprona.

"Now people come with fear, and they are all elderly people who have no reason to feel like that," Eva says. She explains that for the time being, those sanctioned have to pay for a lawyer and the fine imposed on them. A significant financial outlay and "feeling like criminals" when they believe they have not committed any crime.

"There are days when I come three times," says Miguel, who keeps chickens on part of the land. "I come first thing in the morning and feed them, then I go back at midday to have a look. I then come late in the afternoon and we play dominoes until ten o'clock at night. We don't have the money to go to the bar and in the house we get in the way, as they say. Here we are distracted by nature and doing what we like, but now we have the feeling that we are superfluous."

"Having a vegetable garden is not about coming here to work yourself to death to get a bag of tomatoes, it's something else," says Antonio, another of the gardeners, upset because he remembers that his granddaughters have grown up on that piece of land and have played all around the stream.

"All the municipal governments that have passed through Benalmádena town hall over the years have been aware that the allotments were here and they have all given their verbal or tacit consent to our presence," explains Eva. As a result, many of the gardeners have looked to the current local council for help with the situation they are facing. Help that is not coming as quickly as they would like.

For the time being, the council has already said publicly that granting an authorisation to occupy, albeit precariously, portions of the local public domain (something that both the PSOE and the IU in opposition have demanded in order to find a temporary solution) "means depriving the rest of the citizens of their enjoyment and incurring prevarication".

"Although the eviction of the illegally occupied plots is legally required, councillor for the environment Juan Olea has held meetings with those affected to propose alternatives and solutions," says the municipal government. It says that they are working on setting up an area of urban gardens planned in phase 1 of the new Al Baytar park and "to speed up this relocation as much as possible by applying the corresponding legal conditions".