Not the Gaza massacre, not the increase in salaries, not the improvement of public health or the fight against corruption. A few days ago the residents of Tomiño, a town in the south of Galicia, took to the streets to protest about something very different and that is not common to find in 21st century Spain: fly infestations. Fed up with finding annoying insects even in their soup (and no, that’s not a way of speaking), about 300 people gathered in the town to demand that the institutions solve a problem that they have been dragging on for years.
“It’s horrible, really terrible,” they cry.
What has happened? That Galicia has just experienced what may have been the most peculiar manifestation so far this year. Not so much for the form as for the substance. What has brought people to the streets in Tomiño, a town in the south of the province of Pontevedra, is a plague of flies. Thousands and thousands of dipterans that sneak into businesses and homes, complicating the lives of part of the town.
The rally was organized last Sunday in the center of Carregal, the most affected parish of Tomiño, and brought together around 300 residents, according to Tele Mariñas. The mobilization not only served to demand solutions from the administrations. It has also helped to better understand how the plague affects the inhabitants of the area, who claim to be living a true hell.
“This plague doesn’t let me eat, sleep, or anything,” lamented a 77-year-old neighbor who has lived in the neighborhood for more than a decade. “It’s horrible, terrible.”
Is it that serious? The testimonies of the inhabitants of one of the most affected areas, Amorín, in Carregal, show that the invasion of flies is much more than a simple nuisance. “It’s terrible. You kill one and three come to the funeral,” he told a few days ago The Voice of Galicia Avelina, a neighbor.
People talk about flytraps that fill up shortly after hanging them, “desperate” businesses and even people considering throwing in the towel and selling their homes if the problem is not solved. A few months ago in Forcadela, another parish in Tomiño, the owner of a bar confessed that the plague forced her to work reduced hours and do without the terrace so as not to lose customers.
“When you moved there were so many that you could grab them with your hand, you even stepped on them,” the hotelier, Ana Belén, told The Voice of Galicia. “The ceiling of my establishment is white and it was black.” At Sunday’s rally, the residents of Carregal took to the street a poster that, pulling back, made the same complaint: “Menu of the day: 1st, broth with flies; 2nd, chickpeas with flies, coffee with flies. Enough is enough.” Their discomfort is not only due to the dipteran invasion itself. It also bothers them that the problem is repeated year after year without the administrations finding a solution. “We want solutions now.”
What areas does it affect? The weekend protest was organized in Carregal, Tomiño, but a few months ago they complained about the same problem in Forcadela, another neighborhood in the town. In reality, it will have caught few by surprise. In 2024, the town was already complaining about the same problem and there are neighbors who report that flies have been a challenge for nearly five years.
In reality, Tomiño is not the only Galician town that has had to do with the invasion of dipterans. Almost 175 kilometers from there, in Narón (province of A Coruña) there is another parish, O Val, which has had a simulated challenge for years. “It makes you desperate,” one of his neighbors confessed to The Confidential. In his case he has even tried to combat flies with bleach. Without much success.
What is the reason? In Tomiño the problem is serious enough that some time ago the City Council commissioned a study to clarify its causes, a task that fell to a group specialized in environmental biology from the University of Vigo. Salustiano Mato, professor of Zoology, last year resisted talking about a “plague” of flies as such, but admits that there are “disproportionate population booms” of insects in some parts of the municipality.
Its protagonist is the common fly, an insect with a fleeting life cycle, between seven and 30 days, but which is capable of laying about a thousand eggs during that brief period. The affected neighbors explain that “strong pests” are suffered between spring and well into autumn, although the problem is not completely solved during the cold months. “We continue with flies because there is no more frost.”
Regarding the possible causes of its uncontrolled presence in Tomiño, Mato explains that “a perfect storm” seems to have occurred, an opinion shared by Galicia Ambiental. “The combination of climatic factors, temperature and humidity could be behind everything. There is a set of environmental circumstances that favor hatching, irruption or mass reproduction,” they say.
And how to solve it? The problem is more complex than it seems. When it comes to pointing out the causes, more factors have been pointed out, such as the use of fertilizer in crop fields, humidity (the area is near the Miño), the destruction of native forest, with the consequent loss of trees and birds that feed on insects, or the expansion of crops. A few months ago, in fact, the Tomiño City Council related the Forcadela plague to a poorly fertilized farm, in which manure supposedly accumulated on unplowed land.
Things don’t seem to be clear in the offices either. Last year the local government recalled that there is a royal decree of 2022 that establishes that the powers over the inspection and control in the care of farmland falls on the Xunta, but the municipal opposition insists that the law obliges the City Council to “act” and remembers that it is the one that grants the licenses.
For the residents of Tomiño the problem is much simpler. They simply ask the different institutions to “work together” and settle once and for all a problem that, they remember, has complicated their lives for years.
Images | Carregal Neighborhood Association (Instagram), David Burillo (Flickr) and Philip Veater (Unsplash)
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