Against "a speculative sale" in the Basque Country, the only solution is occupation?

The occupation, started on June 27 in Saint-Pée-sur-Nivelle, about ten kilometers east of Saint-Jean-de-Luz, will last until "the sale is broken", assure- they. The property, an old building surrounded by a forest estate of 50 hectares, including 7 of agricultural land, was sold for 1,3 million euros.

In this territory where mobilizations are multiplying against soaring real estate prices, the transaction immediately caused the ELB peasant union (affiliated to the Confédération paysanne) to jump, which regularly fights against sales of agricultural land above market prices.

The challenge is to maintain a "price benchmark", the one that each so-called speculative sale inexorably pulls upwards.

In the Pyrénées-Atlantiques, according to data from the Safer (Society for land development and rural establishment) in 2022, the price of free land and meadows intensified its rise (+6%), which began in 2021.

Value almost quadrupled

If the parties proposed, during mediation meetings, to shift most of the value of the estate to the house, so as not to overvalue the agricultural land, the option was rejected.

"We are fighting against a problem of global speculation, we are talking about giving a value of 1,1 million euros to a house which is worth 300.000", protests Ttotte Elizondo, occupier, peasant and member of the ELB union.

Here, it is impossible to dissociate the built environment, which has lost its agricultural vocation, from the exploitable land. A dead end for Safer, which must comply with the rules of partial pre-emption, namely accepting the sale price set by the buyer.

"The legislator must revise its rules, because of the files of this kind, we have many others which arrive, the ground is mined", estimates Jean-Claude Saint-Jean, person in charge of Safer in the Basque Country.

A bill, tabled in May 2023 by the Basque deputy Vincent Bru and that of the Hautes-Pyrénées Bernard Sempastous, members of the government majority, proposes precisely to widen the possibilities of preemption.

In 20 years, 18.000 hectares of agricultural land have disappeared in the Basque Country, according to figures from the General Agricultural Census (RGA). Between 2010 and 2020, it is estimated that the useful agricultural area has decreased by 3,9% in this territory, when the national rate of decrease is 1%.

Four months in 2021

In the old house, "guard tours" are organized. Every day, volunteers from a different village come to occupy the premises from 9am to 9am the next day. Max Shore, 26, from Switzerland, has been there since day one.

"They are right to fight now and not to let it pass", comments the Genevan, arguing that "at [him], it is already too late".

In a press release published in the local press, the buyers, at the head of a pastry / chocolate factory in Saint-Jean-de-Luz, defend an agricultural project "in connection with the artisanal production of their pastry and chocolate products". They want to produce hazelnuts, figs, cherries and set up beehives.

Ramuntxo Labat-Arramendy, one of the occupants, is not convinced. "Certainly, they are buyers of the territory, but can we let that happen for all that?" Asks this railway worker. He wants to stay as long as it takes for the general public to "finally see reality in the face".

In 2021, an occupation of land in Arbonne, a village 10 minutes from Biarritz and neighbor of Saint-Pée-sur-Nivelle, had lasted four months, until the cancellation of the sale. The sale to a private and non-peasant buyer of three buildings (non-agricultural) and 11 hectares of arable land concluded for more than 3 million euros had shocked and led to a large
mobilization.