Rueda de la Sierra: the rural hunting house will require ordinary environmental assessment.

The rural housing project with hunting use planned in Rueda de la Sierra (Guadalajara) must undergo an ordinary environmental impact assessment. This has been decided by the Provincial Delegation of Sustainable Development of Guadalajara, which issued the environmental impact report on 6 August 2026. The decision is published in the Diario Oficial de Castilla-La Mancha (DOCM) number 154, of 13 August 2026, with reference 2026/5988.

The agreement is adopted under Law 2/2020, of 7 February, on Environmental Assessment of Castilla-La Mancha, which subjects to simplified assessment the projects in Annex II —among them, hotel facilities in rustic land and associated constructions (group 7.q)— to determine whether their effects are significant and, if so, refer them to the ordinary procedure. The promoter is Ana Ramiro Jiménez and the substantive body is the Rueda de la Sierra City Council; the file processed is S478/2025/GU/00045.

A hunting accommodation with 14 places in rustic land

The project consists of an isolated single-family dwelling intended for rural tourism linked to hunting use, on plots 544 and 545 of polygon 32, classified as rustic reserve land and located about 700 metres from the urban centre. The building has a total constructed area of 738.56 m², with capacity for 14 places (7 double bedrooms), and includes perimeter fencing, internal accesses and water, sanitation and electricity connections. Its planned layout is:

• Semi-basement floor: garage, wine cellar, butchery room and auxiliary rooms.
• Ground floor: living-dining room, kitchen, 4 bedrooms and 5 toilets.
• First floor: 3 bedrooms and 3 toilets.
• Exterior terraces of 142.55 and 214.25 m², vegetable gardens and surface parking for 6 spaces.

The reasons of the environmental body

The analysis concludes that the documentation does not allow significant effects to be ruled out: an alternatives study justifying the chosen location is missing, and several basic characteristics of the project are unfeasible or undefined. These are the main reasons:

• The location affects the habitat of Community interest 9340, “Holm oak woods of Quercus ilex and Quercus rotundifolia”: the environmental document estimates 21 holm oak specimens affected, a figure that could grow with the fencing and the perimeter firebreak required due to being in a High Fire Risk Zone.
• The planned fencing encloses two public-use paths of plot 545, originating from the land consolidation (to Cubillejo del Sitio and to Molina de Aragón), and prevents the movement of wild fauna.
• The facilities lie within the hunting ground GU-10351 “Virgen de las Nieves”, whose holder is the Club Deportivo Cazadores de Rueda, in its 100-meter safety zone, which could require segregating the plots as non-hunting land.
• The Rueda de la Sierra City Council does not guarantee the viability of the water, electricity and sanitation connections, and the municipality lacks a wastewater treatment plant, so an autonomous treatment system not contemplated would be necessary.
• The projected cutting room is not defined and could not be used for eviscerating since it is not in the hunting ground or an adjacent one, according to Decree 65/2008; the promoter is the awardee of the hunting use of the woodland GU-10251 in Anchuela del Pedregal.

Procedure and next steps

The application was registered on September 29, 2025, and had to be corrected on three occasions (11/11/2025, 09/02/2026 and 27/03/2026) until it was complete on April 9, 2026. On that basis, 17 consultations were made to administrations and entities —among them WWF/Adena Guadalajara, SEO Birdlife and Ecologistas en Acción de Guadalajara—, from which 8 reports were received before July 6, 2026.

With the notification of this report, the environmental body will send the promoter and the City Council the scoping document for the environmental impact study, which must be prepared in accordance with articles 37 to 39 of Law 2/2020 to initiate the ordinary procedure. The report is not appealable in itself, without prejudice to the appeals that may be brought against the future authorization of the project. The resolution bears the signature of the provincial delegate, Rubén García Ortega.

The decision raises the bar for a type of accommodation expanding in the Castilian-Manchegan rural environment: no rural house linked to hunting may be built without first demonstrating that it does not compromise habitats protected by the Habitats Directive, public paths, or the safety of adjacent hunting grounds. For Rueda de la Sierra, a municipality of the Señorío de Molina, the outcome also conditions the future of hunting tourism and its main natural resource: the holm oak forest.

Source: Official Gazette of Castilla-La Mancha, No. 154, August 13, 2026, section III – Other Provisions and Acts (official reference: 2026/5988).