In recent years, the resurrection of Jánovas has been marked by small achievements full of meaning. The inauguration of the social center in the old school. The first time music was played again at parties. The return of public lighting and the ringing of the old bell, recovered from a neighboring town. The last one, the definitive return of Jesús Garcés, who after decades of struggle and work, has settled with his partner, the Guipuzcoan Marimar, in the house from which one day they forced him out. “This town was never abandoned, they kicked us out of here,” emphasizes this 70-year-old retired laborer.
Jánovas is synonymous with injustice and abuses. Also of rebellion and pride of the humble against the powerful. Located in the valley of the Ara River, in the heart of the Huesca Pyrenees, in the sixties the town had 42 inhabited houses and more than 200 inhabitants, mostly dedicated to the fields and livestock. Misfortune knocked on their doors when Iberduero planned a reservoir in the area for hydroelectric use. With deception and bad tricks, they pressured to combat the resistance of its inhabitants, without hesitating to dynamite expropriated houses to scare the rest.
“From school we counted the explosions and saw how the rubble was flying everywhere,” recalls Jesús, then a child of barely 10 years old. With the town already empty around 1965, his parents, Emilio Garcés and Francisca Castilla, endured almost two more decades alone with the help of their six children amidst pressures and threats. “When Felipe González won the elections (1982), my father triumphantly said “that's it, it's no longer a swamp here.” On January 19, 1984, they were escorted out by the Civil Guard. “That brought us democracy, damn it,” he complains.
Getting to the town has its trick. On the national highway, only a small wooden sign and two faded sheets with protest messages mark the entrance. Those who don't know it are very likely to pass it by. “They don't put up the sign because they don't consider it to be an inhabited area. But it's not like that. There are already two people living here, and others are on the way,” says Óscar Espinosa.
This 51-year-old businessman travels every weekend from Zaragoza to finish the rural house that he is building on the ruins of his grandfather's, Casa Agustín, which will have four tourist apartments. “They rudely kicked him out with 800,000 pesetas for the house and land, just enough to buy an apartment and a taxi license in Barcelona. It only lasted a year and a little while there, he died of grief,” he says. Others went closer: to Boltaña, Fiscal or Zaragoza. They maintained contact with each other, consumed by rage at seeing how administrations passed without the swamp materializing. “Seeing how they treated us for nothing burns you inside,” says Óscar.
After decades of oblivion, the negative environmental impact declaration arrived in 2001, although it was officially rejected in 2005. In 2008, contacts began with Endesa, which acquired the Jánovas assets at the end of 1993, to begin the reversion process with the affected owners, which lasted more than a decade of exhausting negotiations. Initially, they were asked to pay 34 times what they had been given for the homes, but in the end they managed to set a testimonial price of one euro per m². For the land, they dropped from 8,000 euros to 4,500 per hectare. “A tremendous injustice was committed here, but these agreements are the best we could get. Everyone has been able to recover the plot to redo the house or sell it. If someone does business, at least it should be from the people,” says Óscar.
One of those who chose to give life to the municipality again was Ana Garcés (Barbastro, 53 years old, and cousin of Jesús). She never lived here, but Jánovas' story has been a constant in her family life. In 2017 she began to rebuild her home, Casa Frechín, in what was her grandfather's old barn, which is accessed by a road that has not yet been developed. For three years she has spent every weekend there with her partner, Marcel, her sister and her mother, and she plans to move permanently when her partner retires in two years. “With our return, we have recovered the family, and now we all see each other a lot more,” she says while they drink vermouth at the doors of the social center.
As of today, 99% of the files have been resolved, and they are about to close a second purchase of excess assets with which to close the process. In the town there are already five houses more or less finished and another three on the way. The Government of Aragon, which has already invested around 800,000 euros here, has budgeted another 100,000 for 2024, which will be allocated to the treatment plant. On the wish list, two very important ones: a proper access bridge from the road (the temporary ford that exists becomes unusable with each flood of the Ara and forces them to make a 40-minute detour for a journey that costs only one) and a forgiveness that no one has ever deigned to ask of them.
Meanwhile, Jesús and Marimar take care of the town during the week, which oozes life on Saturdays, Sundays and holidays. It is then when the works resume, the children play and the neighbors laugh or argue, symptoms that this is once again a living town. Because as Óscar emphasizes, “we were an example of the fight against injustice, and now we are an example of how to rebuild something from nothing.” As they like to say around here, Jánovas does not speak.
