Spanish Lagoon Mar Menor Faces Initial Court Involvement and Constitutional Challenges to Its Rights
The Mar Menor is a lagoon in Spain located within the region of Costa Cálida and near the cities of Murcia and Cartagena, along the country’s southeastern Mediterranean coast. Mar Menor is an integral and beloved part of the region, but the agriculture, livestock, tourism, mining, and construction industries have degraded its quality, leaving the surrounding community to advocate for the lagoon’s health. Changes to the Mar Menor ecosystem have occurred due to the opening up of large canals and the mismanagement of waste coming from mines, urban areas, and agriculture. Waste from these industries brings in high concentrates of nutrients, creating eutrophication (overgrowth of algae and other aquatic plant life) that has resulted in depleted oxygen levels and biodiversity loss.
Satellite image of Mar Menor. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
Such degradation occurs easily due to the fact that the lagoon has more marinas per square kilometer than anywhere else in the Mediterranean, resulting in large amounts of industrial waste and pollution. There has been a loss of 85% of seagrass meadows, as well as losses to wildlife populations, since 2019, with the first major fish die-off occurring then. As noted by environmental journalist Rocio Periago, the day of that die-off saw “3 tons of dead fish and crustaceans washing up on the beaches,” and in 2021, “4.5 tons of fish died due to the lack of oxygen in the water.” Other species that have suffered from the environmental degradation and poor water quality are the endangered bivalve Pinna nobilis, a species of Mediterranean clams, and seahorses. Because of the biodiversity loss and environmental degradation, protection of this lagoon became a necessity that the local community was ready to fight for.
Legal Personhood for Mar Menor
A group of people stepped up and fought for the lagoon’s rights, ultimately being named the legal guardians of the Mar Menor. Teresa Vicente—a native Murcian who teaches philosophy of law at the University of Murica, serves as the deputy director of the Center for Cooperation and Development Studies, and is the director of the Chair of Human Rights and Rights of Nature—was one of the leading lawyers fighting for the Mar Menor. In 2024, Vicente won the Goldman Environmental Prize, which is dedicated to a lawyer who has given a significant effort and sacrifice in order to protect and enhance the natural environment, usually at personal risk. Another notable champion of the Mar Menor’s legal rights is Dr. Eduardo Salazar-Ortuño, a professor of environmental law at the University of Murcia, who is also a member of the Chair of Human Rights and Rights of Nature.
In August 2021, half a million signatures had been collected from people in communities surrounding the Mar Menor, giving the advocates the ability to “gain a parliamentary vote on the initiative.” In April 2022, Spanish parliament voted in favor, 274 to 53, to “ratify the law granting Mar Menor legal personhood.” Approval of the law was given on July 13, 2022 by the Commission of Ecological Transition and Demographic Challenge of the Congress of Deputies, thereby sending the law to Spain’s Senate for ratification. In the Senate, an overwhelming majority of 230 voted in favor, with just 3 voting against. Law 19/2022 thus made the Mar Menor the first ecosystem in Europe to receive legal personhood. Legal guardianship and representation for the lagoon was assigned to Public Administration, as stated in Articles III and IV of the law, giving “any natural person the ability to enforce the enumerated rights of Mar Menor.”
Legal Challenge to Mar Menor as a Rights Holder
Law 19/2022 was quickly challenged by the Vox parliamentary group, a far-right nationalist party founded in 2013, and the challenge was allowed the Spanish Constitutional Court. The only parliamentary group to vote against granting the Mar Menor rights, Vox filed an “unconstitutionality appeal” in January 2023. The basis of Vox’s challenge was “alleged violations of the right to private property and freedom of occupation.” The group also legally challenged the basis of the law due to “disproportionate restrictions on agricultural activities in the region” and because the “concept of rights of nature [is] constitutionally unclear.” In its unconstitutionality argument, Vox argued that the law violates articles in the Magna Carta, stating that “the constitutional system of distribution of powers between the State and the Autonomous Communities” is being violated.
Legal scholar Marie-Christine Fuchs argues that there are two weak spots in the argumentative basis of the Mar Menor law. The first has to do with the fact that it is tied to the Spanish constitution, which “does not recognize the legal subjectivity of nature” and places human interest before Nature. Article 45 of the Spanish Constitution is used in this argument. The other factor that separates this case from others that have granted legal rights to Nature is that there is no Indigenous community tied to the area of Mar Menor. While this need not be disqualifying, it strays from other successful Rights of Nature precedents. Moreover, during the time where the law was being passed, the Spanish legislator advocating on its behalf did not, in Fuchs’s estimation, do a sufficient job explaining the intrinsic relationship between Mar Menor and the people of Spain.
Whether or to what extent the Spanish court agrees with these arguments remains to be seen, as the court continues to consider the case.
Mar Menor Personhood in Recent Judicial Cases
Since the law has passed, there have been three judicial cases in which the Mar Menor has been invited by a judge in Cartagena to be an offended party. Two of these times have been part of the Topillo case, which challenged the pollution done by agricultural companies, and the other is regarding “Balsa Jenny,” a mining waste pond that is close to the lagoon. The guardians of the lagoon brought this case to court on behalf of the Mar Menor due to water contamination from mining waste pools at the Los Blancos landfill near the Mar Menor. The contamination from dumping was argued to be a violation of the Mar Menor’s rights.
“It was very important, for procedural reasons, that the guardians could act on behalf of the Mar Menor in those proceedings. The ability to act on behalf of the lagoon came from Article 6 of Law 19/2022,” wrote Salazar-Ortuño and Vicente. The accused companies started a judicial opposition against Mar Menor’s victim condition and standing to be a party in the criminal proceeding. The High Court in Cartagena decided against Mar Menor, which means Law 19/2022 does not allow Mar Menor to be an offended party in criminal proceedings. “We think this was a wrong interpretation and we decided to appeal to the Constitutional Court because of the lack of due proceeding on behalf of the Mar Menor again. Article 6 in Law 19/2022 created not an action popularis, but a procedural representation of a party called ‘Mar Menor.’ We are still waiting for a decision,” said Salazar-Ortuño.
