*Misses y medusas* is not just a book about the Mar Menor; it is an environmental thriller that recounts, in journalistic and literary prose, how Europe’s largest saltwater lagoon turned into a green soup of nitrates beginning in 2016. Miguel Ángel Ruiz, a journalist with more than three decades of experience covering environmental issues, reconstructs the story of a foreseeable ecological disaster.
Throughout the book, Ruiz does more than simply describe the consequences of intensive agriculture and livestock farming. The narrative brings to light key figures who warned of the danger decades ago, such as engineer Miguel Ángel García Dory, who as early as 1979 predicted that fertilizers would run off into the lagoon. The book delves into nearly fifty years of problems—urban encroachment, low-cost tourism, mining waste, and political negligence—to help the reader understand the magnitude of a collapse that has left the Mar Menor on “life support.”
With an epilogue warning that “the horror has changed colors,” Ruiz reflects on the uncertain future of a unique ecosystem. Recovery, he asserts, will be “very slow”: “We cannot expect to restore what has been destroyed over 50 years in just one year, or two, or three, or four.” An essential work for understanding not only the crisis in the Mar Menor, but also the conflicts between economic development and conservation that define our times.
