How would you like to wake up one morning and find that somebody has cut down 160 of your olive trees? That’s not a threat, by the way… No, that’s what happened to one olive-tree farmer up in Diezma in the north of the province. The culprits could well be members of a hunters association – read on.
Just before we explain further, we should point out that this news not recent as it dates back to May – the newspaper cutting had been mislaid, crumpled and forgotten, but we thought that it was too interesting to pass over. On with the plot…
The farmer concerned, Antonio Rodríguez had driven over to his farm in the Pago de Tresviles area of the municipality to find a scene of total desolation – each one of his olive trees had been cut down to just a mere meter from the ground.
When you take into account that most olive trees have between two and three main trunks, were talking about over 300 trunks. Furthermore those trees produced 6,000 kilos of olives a year, which convert into 1,200 litres of olive oil. Antonio calculates the productivity loss at 30,000 euros, the poor sod.
Whoever did it certainly had his work cut out for him to cut down that many trees in one night with a chainsaw, in the dark, which brings us onto possible culprits…
Antonio says that he had been approached by a group of local hunters, asking him to give his permission for them to hunt on his land. Soon after having agreed to this he received threatening calls, demanding that he rescinded the agreement.
If that weren’t enough, the warning was backed by a series of graffiti warnings near the roadside; the first was accompanied by one of his trees being cut down. The message warned that if he did not heed their demands, all of his trees would be cut down.
The warning read: “You’ve got one week to break the agreement or I swear to God I’ll not leave one tree standing.” The following message simply read: “You have been warned!”
Antonio feels that he was stuck in the middle of a dispute between two parties. “All I did was grant a favour.” He considers what was done as purely sadistic. As far as he is concerned, whoever did it is “scum” whose actions benefit nobody.
The Chairman of the Asociación de Cazadores Cristo de la Fe, Jacob Hervás, claims that none of their members had anything to do with it. “There is no argument between us nor has there ever been,” he says.
(News: Diezma, Granada, Andalucia)