"Las provincias" and the foundations of Valencian environmentalism. The columns by Maria Consuelo Reyna on El Saler and the Turia river bed

Abstract

This article focuses on the opinion columns that María Consuelo Reyna wrote in Las Provincias about the project to urbanize the coastal area Dehesa del Saler and the dry river bed of the Turia in the early seventies. In her columns the reporter raised a debate against urbanization, in defense of creating green spaces, and orchestrated the newspaper’s campaign that eventually helped stall the urbanization plan and turn the Turia river bed into a green space. This was an epoch in which Reyna used the resources she was going to develop later, in the eighties, during the Batalla de València (Battle of Valencia), turning her into a key figure in Valencian politics.