I am Teresa Conesa, I belong to the citizen movement Banderas Negras, later constituted as an association Alianza Mar Menor ( AMARME ) and a member of the promoters of the ILP of the Mar Menor.
My relationship with the Mar Menor is from my childhood, in the summers my parents together with the family visited this wonderful environment, with crystal clear, salty, and warm waters, with a fauna and flora that made it very peculiar, where the seahorses stood out. Its surroundings with the beauty of its sunrises and sunsets continue to delight those who approach its waters.
When the process of progressive contamination became so brutal that it caused its first ecocide on 10 December 2019, the emotional impact provoked society to raise voices. That’s when we began to demand solutions to this problem, demonstrating in the streets with protest banners, informing society about the problems and what caused these with biologists, scientists, ecologists and lawyers like Teresa Vicente and Eduardo Salazar. They informed us that the Mar Menor ecosystem could be given rights, like people have. Rights to be protected and to exist. In this philosophy of environmental law we saw the hope of being able to protect the ecosystem and we organised ourselves to collect the necessary signatures to be able to grant rights.
It was a tremendous fight, we were fighting against not only COVID but also cold, rain, heat, wind, misunderstanding and insults. It was then that I discovered the love I had for this wonderful ecosystem, involving my husband risking his life. In return, we discovered so many wonderful people with whom we have and continue to share moments of struggle, illusion, tenacity and hope.
