On both sides of the long straight road from Tudela to Ablitas, in addition to the olive trees and vineyards, you can see large series of broccoli and tomato everywhere. The plot concentration carried out a few years ago has completely altered the landscape of Ablitas, in the lower part of the Queiles Valley.

The tower of the old guard castle of the urban area. Many houses are renovated and have Euskaldunes names; according to the locals, the old town is still standing thanks to the friends who have gone to seek a drier climate from the wet Basque Country.

In Ablitas, tourism has possibilities: Las Bardenas, Monte Moncayo, Sendaviva Park, the surrounding villages... In 2008 the City Hall approved a plan to install a recreation area next to the Lor pond. This is how the Camping Mendianike project emerged. Work has stopped after the land has been halved and a few bungalows have been set up, paralysed by the crisis.

On the road to Ribaforada, the only industrial estate in the town has only a few small workshops and a yesera. Public society Nasiunsa was going to build a new industrial estate of 107,000 square meters in the area, but the real estate bubble broke out, the scandals of the Navarre government broke up, and here too there is no more than a large fallow.

Many ablitas work in the workshops in Tudela. Before, construction was the most important profession; today, looking at the industrial map of Gaindegia, we realize that it is a sector of servicios.Sin embargo, like many other towns in the


Ribera de Navarra, Ablitas is closely linked to agriculture, and not few have the trade on the plots.

In 2007, at the initiative of the Government of Navarre, the reform of the parcels and irrigation systems began. € 20 million was invested in opening roads and incorporating irrigation pipes. Almost 6,000 plots were grouped into 1,153 consolidated.

If you ask the local farmer, he will tell you that the concentration has been “very good”, as he has made available comfortable slopes and water. In addition, in recent generations possessions have been prodigiously fragmented and citizens could not benefit from the small inherited farms.

Another thing is that they like the new possessions that have touched them; there are also those who have taken advantage of the process of concentration and made use of the best lands. It should not be easy to see how the heritage of ancestors is transformed like chromes.

The benefits are, but the damage has also been significant. When the works began, the Platform for the Defense of the Natural Heritage of the Ribera, Queiles, denounced that in the area of Special Conservation of Peñadil, Montecillo and Monterrey, trenches of about 10 meters were being built that caused serious damage to the nature of the area.

The farmers who, as a result of the concentration, were about to lose their land, cut off their olive trees to use them in the fire. The hunting cooperative Nuestra Señora del Rosario de Ablitas claims that between 2004 and 2010 20,589 trees have been cut, 60% of the olive groves of the municipality, many of them hundreds of years old.

The cooperative of Ablitas, founded in 1952 by 200 farmers, is in part heir to the historic pre-war agricultural work of Navarra. He is currently a member of the Association of Agricultural Cooperatives of Navarra (UCAN). The association, which brings together 169 cooperatives and 21,000 members, is engaged in a merger process promoted by the Barcina Government. All of this will also be noticed in Ablitas.

In fact, in this corner of the Ribera the model of mechanized manufacturing has also been boosted, so only owners who can make large economic investments can make profits. The olive trees are replanted very strongly, but in line, docile, waiting for the machines to shake to collect the olives in the net.

In Ablitas, the Paloteado has lasted, which could be familiar to Basque Bertsolarism. Every year, several friends, in addition to watering the things of the people in public, ferociously criticize the rulers singing bertsos. This year there has been no shortage of ANC issues and praise for the social associations of the people: “If it were not for them, this people would be more dead than alive.”