A family of farmers in Spain have been sentenced to more than three years in prison for illegally drawing water from Donana Park, a World Heritage Site that has become the symbol of the country's growing problems around water shortages.

According to the judgment dated September 18, four men and a woman who are brothers and sisters were declared guilty of crimes against the environment for having posed "a serious risk on the ecosystem" of this protected area of ​​Andalusia.

This prison sentence is the first for illegal water pumping in Donana, a natural park at the heart of political debate for months. The convicts drew nearly 20 billion liters of water for their fields between 2008 and 2013, double what they were authorized to do, leaving the water table in "poor condition."

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They had already been sanctioned around ten times in the past for their use of water.

Beyond the prison sentence, they will have to pay two million euros ($2.13 million) to the public body responsible for managing water in the Guadalquivir river basin and also no longer have the right to cultivate anything during two years.

Donana, a reserve which is home to thousands of species of animals and plants on its 100,000 hectares of lagoons, marshes, dunes and forests, is threatened both by the persistent drought affecting Spain but also by ravages of intensive agriculture.

A controversial bill from the right-wing regional government, aimed at expanding the current irrigation zone by regularizing hundreds of hectares of illegal red fruit crops around the park, could be adopted in the coming weeks.

Spain's left-wing central government has announced that it will take the matter to court if this regional law is adopted, while UNESCO has warned that the park could lose its World Heritage status.

The Donana issue had occupied a central place in the campaign for the local elections in May and the legislative elections in July in a country where 80 percent of fresh water resources are consumed by agriculture.

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