The abuse became so widespread that a special investigative commission of the European Union last year branded Spain's urban-development practices illegal under European law and a violation of basic cultural rights.
Despite a slew of criminal cases brought by prosecutors, government officials have proved themselves unable, or unwilling, to control the growth; often, they profited from it, in cahoots with unscrupulous developers.
"From the political right, or the left, it doesn't seem to matter," another member of Ecologists in Action, Juan Aceituno, said as he toured some of the eyesores with a reporter.
Developers say they were merely meeting a demand for housing and turning a legitimate profit; because government in Spain is so decentralized, with each of 17 autonomous regions in charge of urban policies, officials have claimed impotence in setting or enforcing rules.
For the last couple of years, it has been up to a ragtag band of environmentalist guerrillas backed by so-called green attorneys to challenge what they call "savage urbanization." Battles are won, and many more lost.
In one victory here in Toledo, Oliveros and his associates managed to stop an apartment complex from being built on the ruins of one of the most important Visigoth sites in central Spain, planting themselves in front of bulldozers poised to dig up the site.
For every triumph, however, there have been defeats. Driving up the road from Toledo, the entrances of towns are gantlets of cranes, brick factories and warehouses selling tile, plumbing materials and bathroom fixtures. Aquamarine prefab swimming pools stand on their ends like giant monsters challenging the buyer.
Thirty-five miles north of Toledo, a sprawling mini-city and 18-hole golf course are encroaching on the picturesque medieval town of Escalona. Environmentalists say its builders destroyed 100-year-old oak trees (which were used by the developers in promotional literature as a reason to move there) and that the settlement, like similar projects, is dipping ever deeper into aquifers to supply prospective residents with water.
Across Spain, nearly 20,000 illegal wells are sucking water reserves from aquifers to support new housing tracts. And especially in the drought-ridden south, scores of water-guzzling golf courses are incongruously covering the land like kudzu.
