To the northwest of León, in the heart of the Maragatería region but already bordering the Teleno Mountains, is the municipality of Prada de la Sierra, an eminent agricultural and livestock town that, like many others in the area, suffered the ravages of the rural exodus in the last decades of the 20th century. Such was the case that it ended up losing its status as a district, for which it came to depend entirely on the Colomba de Somoza City Council. A decision that the courts now overturn, since the Contentious-Administrative Court of León has decided that Prada de la Sierra ‘re-exists’.
The sentence, known yesterday, condemns the City Council of Santa Colomba de Somoza to re-register the aforementioned municipality with the National Institute of Statistics.
The decision has been widely celebrated by the residents, who considered that they had been “living in limbo” for years because the Santa Colomba town hall “refused to recognize the existence of the town after deregistering it in 1992”, despite the fact that “they never was totally abandoned”, since “the descendants continued to return during the summer period”, reports Ep.
And it is that at the beginning of the 21st century, the Nueva Prada de la Sierra Association insisted on rebuilding the municipality. Thus, it was repopulated permanently and began to receive new permanent inhabitants who “kept the town fully cared for”, for which they “opened the Casa del Pueblo with a Library donated by the Leonese Institute of Culture, installed public lighting with plaques solar and placed signs to identify the names of the 13 streets of the town.
Since then, several residents of Prada de la Sierra had filed several complaints and lawsuits to have their rights recognized and for the town to “re-exist”, since the Town Hall of Santa Colomba de Somoza had classified it as rustic land, of way that “put obstacles to people who wanted to rebuild homes or settle in the town”, which led to another lawsuit against the urban planning regulations of the municipality.
The lawyer Víctor Álvarez Bayón, in charge of defending the interests of the residents of Prada de la Sierra, has referred to the ruling as “a clear example of the fight against depopulation”, since the City Council had left the residents “in a clearly irregular situation”, for which “they appear registered in different localities such as Foncebadón or Rabanal del Camino”.
