Mar Menor, Europe’s biggest saltwater lagoon, sits on the coast of southeastern Spain. A strip of sand separates the 52-square-mile area from the Mediterranean, creating warm shallow waters and enticing beaches popular with tourists. But in recent years these crystalline waters have turned murky with algal blooms, mounds of dead fish have washed up on its shores, and the once fresh and salty scent has been replaced by a foul stench of decay.
It was after the 2019 die-off, when an estimated three tons of dead fish washed up onto the shores, that Vicente was compelled into action. She had been on a three-month fellowship at the University of Reading’s Centre of Justice and Climate in the UK at the time, but her students in Murcia called her up and told her what was happening. “I immediately went back, because I wanted to start implementing the theory into law,” she says.