The Generalitat does not currently consider the interconnection of the Ebro with the Ter-Llobregat system as a solution to the problem of lack of water in the Barcelona region. The drought managers in the Government consider that with the investments that will be carried out in the coming years it will not be necessary to reach this extreme that causes so much suspicion and rejection inside and outside Catalonia. It is a “discarded” option at this time, but it has been on the table for decades. This is certified by a project from the Barcelona City Council, dated 1968 and rescued from the newspaper archive by La Vanguardia, in which the “definitive solution to the supply of drinking water in the city of Barcelona” is proposed, without hesitation. This solution involves, first of all, “for dry years”, “covering the deficits with elevated waters of the Ebro”.
The document in question, prepared by the Technical Programming Office of the City Council then chaired by Franco's mayor José María de Porcioles, is an annex to the General Municipal Action Plan. It includes documents dating back to the 19th century, to the time of Ferdinand VII, and which reveal how authorities from such remote times already had the city's water supply as one of their priorities.
The municipal plan draws attention not only for the historical documentation that contributes to the understanding of the problem, but, above all, for the detail with which it addresses the situation at that precise moment – marked by the very recent effective arrival of water. of the Ter River to Barcelona in 1967 – and the investments that would be necessary so that the city and the 22 municipalities in its immediate surroundings would not suffer from the lack of water in years of low rainfall.
The Catalan Water Plan for the Integral Use of the Rivers of the Catalan Region draws on the map the necessary infrastructure to ensure stable supply to the Barcelona area. “The regularized waters of the rivers located north of Girona, serving their own areas, flow towards the Ter basin; those of the latter, once they are free to use, are transferred to Barcelona”, establishes the initial premise. On the other hand, "the leftovers from the Segre are transferred to the countryside of Tarragona, from where, in turn, they can be taken to Barcelona after being replaced with elevated waters from the Ebro." In short, it is about “establishing the connection of all the rivers in the region in a form and service analogous to that resulting in an electrical network.”
The plan from almost 60 years ago already provided that the supply to Barcelona and neighboring municipalities would be served with 12 m3/second (s) of water from the Ter and, in dry years, with 4.5 m3/s from said river and 7 .5 m3/s of water from the Segre, “these latter flows supplied with high flows from the Ebro”.
The document also indicates that the waters intended to supply the population "are extremely pure and will be clarified in the Ter and Segre reservoirs" and will allow reaching the provision of 250 liters per inhabitant per day for a population projection of about 5 millions of inhabitants. The programmers of the time also took into account the irrigation of 200,000 hectares of land, "generally of optimal quality and in an area with an excellent climate, with good working-class towns and equipped with means of work." And, as befitted a political regime that maintained autarkic pretensions, it concludes that the proposed solution “makes it possible to quickly increase national assets by several billion pesetas, with hardly any need to invest foreign currency.”
