A group of seven mountaineers cut on Tuesday a dozen nails from the Port of Cotatuero, located in the Ordesa National Park, led by the well-known and controversial activist Jesús Valles. In the statement released on social networks, the group has determined that the main objective of the action is to "return to nature" the buccardo and the forester. According to them, in recent years there has been an increase in sports activities in the Ordesa National Park and the "touristing" of the park, which threatens the survival of these two species.

The group condemns the fact that Ordesa is becoming an "adventure park", which is why it is losing a large part of its wild fauna: for example, in addition to the aforementioned ranger and bucardo, the bear, the wolf and the lynx. They wanted to take advantage of the cut of the nails to denounce it, Valles said, warning of the action in which they installed posters in all the accesses to reach Cotatuero.

Condemnation of Ecologists in Action

The Ecologistas en Acción de Aragón group has criticized the action and its authors very strongly. Here is the message he sent: "From the Ecologistas en Acción de Aragón group we strongly condemn the vandalistic actions that have taken place in Cotacuero. The action has been carried out by members of the far-right neo-Nazi movement Pyrenees Wilderness and MSR. These movements and people seek social confrontation and hatred, even putting people’s lives at risk. As they have done this time, they sometimes take refuge in the false pretext of defending nature, which is utterly despicable, and contrary to the true defence of nature."

The team that has carried out the action is led by Jesus Valles, who has opened it. The media Heraldo de Aragón receives the controversy generated by the action and remembers the past of Valles. In the 1990s he founded the group S.O.S Naturaleza in favor of the presence of the bear and the wolf in the Pyrenees, carrying out various actions and having conflicts with the ranchers. In 2011 he founded the Los Verdes-Grupo Verde party: "He presided over the candidacy for the Zaragoza City Council, a list that supported supporters of an ultra-right party. The environmental organizations challenged the list because it included some neo-Nazis from the Republican Social Movement (MSR) and included environmental activists on the list without reporting on the presence of MSR members."

One of the most popular steps in Ordesa for many years

The port of Cotatuero is located in the north of the National Park of Ordesa, in the Aragonese Pyrenees, where the nails were present since 1881, according to Navarra News. In fact, the nails were commissioned by the British hunter Lord Buxtun, two blacksmiths from the village of Torla (Aragon), to facilitate access to the upper part of the port and to hunt spices such as deer and forest in it. Since then, it has become one of the most popular places in Ordesa for mountaineers who pass it every year, but also a matter of environmental controversy, as shown by Tuesday’s action.