Casa Quemada

Artistic walks through a condemned land

At the end of 2024, I discovered satellite images of Huelva and Seville that looked like abstract art. I decided to explore them. I started on September 25th at the Solnova solar plant. At the end of the route, a sign read: "Casa Quemada” (Burnt House). I collected branches and trash as testimony, but I realized that recording my GPS trail was enough. My walks would be pieces of Data Art, without added aesthetics, information ready to download.

Next, I went to the Tartessian site hidden in Cortijo Soberbina, where in 1930, after igniting "a spark of light," seven people died charred: an entire family and a muleteer who lived with them. Additionally, nearly a hundred animals perished. In other nearby Tartessian sites, remains of hecatombs have been found: horses and livestock burned inside a house condemned to burial. Perhaps as an offering to stop the infertility of the soil.

From Matalascañas, I walked to the mouth of the Guadiamar. Water pumping has dried Doñana from within. Climate change, human consumption in this population, and especially irrigation, worsen the decline of groundwater. The Almonte-Marismas aquifer, sandy and shallow, is vulnerable to contaminants like glyphosate, used by farmers. At the Torre de la Carbonera, a 16th-century watchtower, I ended my route.

Days later, I arrived at the CEUS center, where drones and projects like Tarsis from the Ministry of Defense are developed. The new European directive on "strategic raw materials" militarizes new legislation that overrides environmental laws. Material is needed for automated technological warfare.

I visited a Roman water mill in a Green Corridor of the Guadiamar that still shows the aftermath of the Boliden mine spill. After rains in March, the river will turn turquoise due to dissolved metals, and metallic stains will emerge from the ground. Some signs prohibit digging. Recently, Petroleum Oil & Gas was prevented from using the subsoil as a gas storage facility.

In 2017, a fire in Las Peñuelas devastated more than 8,500 hectares. I still see its traces. On the night of June 24th, the wind fueled the flames for days. The pine forests, once carbon sinks, now fuel global warming as they burn. Along the way, signs warn of the transfer of contaminants from Repsol's Poseidon gas pipeline, a route abandoned due to neighborhood protests.

I walked through Huerta del Hambre, burned on August 5, 2023. Sixty neighbors spent the night in the Bonares sports center. They experienced what hundreds of migrants in shacks go through every day. This year, in Lucena del Puerto, a fire in a settlement killed a man from Ghana. Since 2008, in Huelva, more than seven migrants have died in similar tragedies.

From the Lucena cemetery, you can see greenhouses and settlements like "Sevillana" or "the Malians'." Up to 19 nuclei are counted, increasingly hidden and remote, without water, light, or garbage collection. Recently, some also offer sexual services. The Tinto River, contaminated, stands out for its sulfurous colors. I ended the tour in its waters.

Days later, I walked towards the Olivargas River, crossing a private road to the Aguas Teñidas mine, owned by Sandfire MATSA. I saw green foam. In 2018, two spills affected crops; one of them released 500 cubic meters of waste into its bed. Although drinking water is controlled, contamination can reach human consumption through foods like fish or farm products.

In the 19th century, British companies boosted mining in the Iberian Pyrite Belt. La Poderosa extracted silver until 1924, when the price of copper fell. Today, a more subtle colonial model resurfaces: the colonized do not know they are. I reached the abandoned village near the mine. It is the end of the journey.

I feel that Andalusia is condemned. Perhaps the problem is the disconnection from nature. The Tartessians knew they depended on it. I started out of aesthetic curiosity and ended up compelled to testify. Another form of art must oppose this new technological order. We will all have to do it, in this era of victims who, like so many others in the past, still die in burnt houses.