THE LAST HOUSE BEFORE THE SEA

Observations from the front lines of an endangered landscape.

Just before turning 50, author and journalist Martínez arranged to spend a year in Buda, an island owned by the Gallart family at the tip of Spain’s Ebro Delta, which is anticipated to be “ground zero for Europe’s first climate refugees.” Over the past hundred years Buda has transformed from a place of leisure to one meant for investment; both its natural and monetary returns have deteriorated through industrial production, national environmental regulations, and the broader economic landscape. In his attempt to “rescue” the island, heir Mateo Gallart has become a rare combination of landowner and local, an outspoken, fiery advocate for the delta, decrying its looming destruction along with the shortsightedness of environmentalists and the questionable motives of the bureaucratic La Administración. In Buda, Martínez embeds with a small community of remaining rice farmers, fishermen, and bull ranchers, toiling under the eye of the militant supervisor Simona and the accelerating threat of climate change. His record bears witness to the transition caused by rising seawater and reflects transitions in the author’s own life—his milestone birthday, the decline of his aging father. Each industry, interest, and individual that Martínez encounters is presented with tender respect, quiet amusement, and a deep appreciation for natural wonder, the cycles of history, and the human predicament of those who know and love the delta best. But these stories, like everything in any delta, are momentary foci, pieces of sediment undergirding the shape-shifting of the whole. The mission of preservation is, like the land itself, murky and muddied, a product of progress and growth both triumphant and misguided; urgency swells and subsides like waters amid daily livelihoods. Martínez’s account, in content, structure, and style, mirrors this nuance and complexity, resisting myopic quick fixes and even easy catastrophizing.

A steady, tempering, enigmatic chronicle of a polarizing, and ultimately personal, ending.