Murcia’s farmers fear for the future as Spain
cuts water supplies from River Tagus
By Euronews
Green with AFP •
Updated: 10/05/2023
Spain’s
government has decided to cut water brought from the Tagus River to irrigate
crops in the bone-dry southeast of the country.
Spain is
one of the EU’s biggest fruit and vegetable producers.
Almost half
of the country’s exports are grown by farmers like Juan Francisco Abellaneda,
co-founder of farming cooperative Delior.
His salads
and watermelons fill the shelves of Europe’s supermarkets throughout the year.
These crops are irrigated by water brought from the River Tagus, hundreds of
kilometres to the north of Abellaneda’s 300 hectares of fields near Murcia.
But, as
Spain faces the realities of climate change with three-quarters of the country
at risk of desertification, the government has decided to limit the flow of
water from the Tagus to the southeastern Levante.
“There are
many thousands of hectares that are cultivated here, as soon as you cut that
(the water supplies) by half, well, everything that is not cultivated will be
desert, in a few decades, in a few years,” Abellaneda explains.
Without
water, the land can’t be irrigated leading to uncertainty about the future. It
means he may have to cut some of the 700 staff employed by the Delior
cooperative.
“We need
the water. If they take it from us, it will be nothing but a desert here,” Abellaneda
says.
‘
Why has water transfer become controversial?
Water
levels in the Tagus, the Iberian peninsula’s longest river, have dropped
dangerously low. In some places, the dried-up riverbed can be crossed on foot
in summer.
As the
Tagus runs dry, the right to pull water from the river - which crosses into
Portugal before meeting the Atlantic Ocean - has been the centre of a heated
debate.
“The Tagus
is suffering," says Domingo Baeza, professor of river ecology at the
Autonomous University of Madrid.
"It is
degraded in numerous places... because we have far outstripped its capacity
(with) uncontrolled expansion of the land it irrigates."
Water is
channelled to the bone-dry southeast of Spain via the Tagus-Segura Water
Transfer project - 300 kilometres of tunnels, canals, aqueducts and reservoirs.
It brings billions of litres of water from the Tagus to the Segura basin
between Murcia and Andalusia.
It was once
heralded as a vital solution to drought - now it is accused of making them
worse.
Global warming has changed Spain
Since the
Water Transfer was built, Spain’s average temperature has increased by 1.3
degrees Celsius, according to the country’s meteorological service. Extreme
temperatures and a lack of rainfall have dried up rivers and reservoirs,
leading to water shortages.
"Global
warming has changed things," says Julio Barea, a spokesperson for
Greenpeace Spain. He adds that the Transfer "no longer works" for
Spain.
"The
Tagus needs the water (it is losing to farms in the southeast) to survive."
Residents
of the Castile-La Mancha region, where the Tagus’ waters are syphoned away, say
the effects have been visible for years. Artificial lakes created by the
damming of the river in the 1950s used to attract tourists who would come to
swim, boat and eat at local restaurants.
“Everything
stopped when the damned water transfers started,” says Borja Castro, vice
president of the Association of Riverside Municipalities of Entrepenas and
Buendia, whose water is pumped to the southeast.
“With our
water went businesses, jobs and a part of our population. They turned the
Levante into the garden of Europe, but with water that came from somewhere
else. It's madness.”
A battle over water in Spain
Farmers in
the southeast say cutting the flow of water from the Tagus could mean the end
of agriculture in the region.
It could
lead to 12,200 hectares of arable land being abandoned, the SCRATS farmers
lobby group claims. The economic cost would also be colossal, it argues, up to
€137 million a year, with 15,000 jobs lost.
Prime
Minister Pedro Sanchez’s left-wing government says it had no choice but to cut
the flow of water to keep in line with rulings from Spain’s Supreme Court and
EU environmental rules.
Minister
for Ecological Transition Teresa Ribera has said that the decision was based on
"the best scientific knowledge possible". She has promised more money
to develop other sources of water like desalination - something farmers say is
too expensive to be viable.
The decree
has created a unique political situation ahead of local elections later this
month.
The socialist
region of Valencia is backing Murcia to try and stop the cuts. But
socialist-held Castile-La Mancha, with the help of local right-wing
politicians, backs the government’s decision to stop the flow of water.
Environmentalists
argue that Spain’s whole agricultural system needs to be completely rethought.
“More than
80 per cent of freshwater in Spain is used by agriculture... it's just not
tenable,” says Greenpeace’s Barea.
“Spain
cannot be the garden of Europe if our water is getting more and more scarce.”
Watch the
video above to learn more about Spain’s water wars.
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