Battle rages for 12 years over half-built tourist complex that some say should be returned to nature

“Paradise found”, reads a sign at one of Spain’s more exclusive, and unlikely, beach bars. Another touts piña coladas, mojitos and caipirinhas while an adjacent notice reminds guests that shirts must be worn.

On a cold, clear December afternoon, however, the artificial beach on the Isla de Valdecañas is deserted, the bar shuttered and the dog days of the year a distant memory.

The question for those who work or own property on the island, which sits in a huge reservoir in the south-western Spanish region of Extremadura, is how many more summers the development will see.

Twelve years after work began to turn the 130-hectare (321-acre) site into a sprawling residential, tourism and leisure complex, the project is facing demolition.

Supporters of the development, who include the regional government and many residents of nearby villages – not to mention the well-heeled madrileños who have bought boltholes in the oasis less than two hours’ drive from the capital – argue that it would be folly to tear down the four-star hotel, sprawling golf course and villas.

But ecologists who have been fighting the project through the courts since 2007 say the resort should never have been built on the island, which sits in a special bird protection zone and forms part of an EU-wide conservation area.

In a 2011 ruling later upheld by the supreme court, the regional high court ordered the island be returned to its previous state on the basis that its designation as a “project of regional interest” was invalid.

In November, the country’s constitutional court headed off another challenge by the Extremaduran regional government and the matter is once again before the regional high court, which will decide how to effect its 2011 ruling.

For the time being, however, the island floats in a familiar limbo. A second hotel by the beach remains a half-built jumble of concrete and steel, and the rows of villas are shut up for winter, their drives covered with fallen leaves.

Aside from the three men playing golf on the immaculate course and a rabbit that hops across the road with a spectacular lack of urgency, there are few signs of life.

The Association for the Defence of Extremadura’s Nature and Resources (Adenex), which brought the legal challenge, says the court’s rulings need to be carried out to respect the law and to restore and protect biodiversity.

“Spain is still a democratic country and it’s the job of social and ecological movements to be transparent and consistent when it comes to defending the law and the European network of protected spaces,” it argues.

The regional government, or junta – which has put the cost of demolishing the development and compensating property owners at €130m (£111m) – says restoring the island to its former state makes little sense. “It was just a space planted with eucalyptus trees with no environmental value worth preserving,” according to a spokeswoman.

The junta also points out that Extremadura, one of Spain’s most neglected regions, is facing depopulation and needs to be able to offer jobs such as those provided by the development.

'Empty Spain’: country grapples with towns fading from the map Read more

“As far as this administration is concerned, creating economic activity and employment to avoid depopulation is in the common interest and is something that is and can be compatible with sustainability.”

It hopes an agreement can be reached to preserve the finished areas, knock down the half-built ones and make the project more environmentally sustainable.

Some of those who live nearby claim the development’s critics forget that the site used to be a dumping ground littered with cans, glass, plastic and old domestic appliances.

“This has been going on for 12 years and people are pretty fed up with the environmental sector,” says Silvia Sarro, the mayor of the nearby village of El Gordo.

“People talk about this island like it was a wilderness before but it wasn’t – it was a dump.”

Sarro says the development provides service and maintenance jobs for people in El Gordo and elsewhere in the area and should be left as it is.

Quick guide Depopulation in Europe Show Hide In many parts of Europe, the issue of depopulation of the countryside, regions, or in some cases whole countries, weighs on the minds of politicians and the public, as an era of freedom of movement means more people are able to migrate to find better opportunities. A recent study by the European Council on Foreign Relations showed that in Spain, Italy, Greece, Poland, Hungary and Romania, countries where the population has either declined sharply or is flatlining, more people are worried about emigration than they are about immigration. The problem is felt acutely in central and eastern Europe, where populations have shrunk dramatically in the decades since the fall of communism, due in part to the traumatic effects of the transition, with high mortality rates, low birth rates, and millions of people travelling to western Europe to seek higher salaries, especially in the years after EU accession. In Bulgaria, for example, the population has shrunk from 9 million to 7 million since 1989.

“People talk about the ‘empty Spain’ and it’s something we all feel and something we’re living through across the whole region,” she says. “What they’ve done on the island has meant that families have been able to stay in the area. There have even been some new people moving in – because of the complex.”

Adenex disagrees, saying it would have been better to spend all the capital invested in the project on a legal and sustainable enterprise to bring in tourists and support the people of El Gordo and the nearby, smaller village of Berrocalejo.

Some, however, remain unconvinced by those arguments.

Juan Carlos Domínguez, who runs a small gardening business and has worked in the complex for more than a decade, has little nostalgia for the island of 15 years ago.

“People used to dump their washing machines there once they’d stopped working,” he says, adding that demolition would ruin him.

“It makes up about 80% of my company’s work,” he says. “I started the business to work on the island. I’d have to pack my bags and leave if it was demolished.”