The director of the Biodiversity Foundation, Sonia Castañeda, participated in the presentation of the book “Doñana in its history, four centuries between exploitation and conservation under the possession of the house of the Guzmanes”, which took place at the Casa Medina Sidonia Foundation in Sanlúcar de Barrameda (Cádiz). Accompanied by the director of the Autonomous National Parks Agency (OAPN), Basilio Rada; the director of the Doñana National Park, Juan Pedro Castellano; the president of the Casa de Medina Sidonia Foundation, Liliane María Dahlmann; and the author of the book, Francisco García, Castañeda has pointed out that Doñana has an inestimable value for its rich biodiversity, and for being an exponent of a unique landscape.
The book on this protected natural area, which covers the provinces of Huelva, Seville and Cádiz, has been published by the OAPN and has the support of the Biodiversity Foundation, both entities depend on the Ministry of Agriculture, Food and the Environment.
Its author has dedicated almost a decade of his life to unraveling and putting in order 600 years of history of the largest ecological reserve in Europe, also putting an end to false myths about this space, such as that it has always been a protected environment.
After a pilgrimage in search of information through the National Historical Archives, the General of Simancas, the General of the Navy Don Álvaro de Bazán (Ciudad Real) and the Municipal Archives of Almonte and Hinojos (Huelva), García focused on the General Archive of the Casa Medina Sidonia Foundation, located in the palace of the Guzmanes, in Sanlúcar de Barrameda. and that houses historical documents from a large part of Spain and even Latin America.
The period of time covered by García’s research covers from 1309, when King Ferdinand IV donated Doñana to the Dukes of Medina Sidonia, to 1900, when the Ducal House was in financial difficulties and sold the Coto to Guillermo Garvey.
The book, of which there will be two editions, one institutional and the other for sale to the public, is dedicated to Luisa Isabel Álvarez de Toledo y Maura, XXI Duchess of Medina Sidonia, the woman with whom the author interviewed in 2005 to communicate his intentions to elaborate the history of Doñana. The work, 400 pages long, has more than 160 images including maps, old photos and other current ones of the Park.