The scarcity of water in Catalonia is on its way to becoming the great headache of the Government in the remainder of the legislature, even beyond if the 30 months without regular rain continue. The caliber of the crisis may be such that in Palau and the parties do not hesitate to equate the situation to that caused by the covid.
Like the pandemic, the drought is an unforeseen factor capable of highlighting the public management of years, which leaves little room to react in time. If, no matter how much the fingers are crossed, the rains do not remedy it, the response will require exceptional, harsh, unpopular measures that will affect a large part of the population, for which it seems essential to have a global political consensus. The president will try to carve it out at the party summit called for March 31, but the opposition has received criticism of his first steps, the "unilateral" approval of the Government of the emergency decree against the drought, which "transfers responsibility to the municipalities” and “threatens them with sanctions”, according to their regret.
In addition, Junts and the CUP criticize that this summit "is not going to be more than a photo". “In the face of such an extreme situation, as was done with the covid, you have to constantly meet with experts,” they point out.
No one forgets the political exhaustion that the 2008 drought implied for the tripartite, but Aragonès's search for consensus comes up against a pre-electoral context before the May municipal elections, in which party interests are boiling that can weigh down the effort . The president warned on Wednesday: "Don't make the drought a partisan battle ahead of the elections."
The current drought is harsh. The internal basins, those managed by the Agència Catalana de l'Aigua (ACA), are at a quarter of their capacity, up to 224 municipalities in Catalonia are in the exceptional phase and some sixty towns have been depending on tanker trucks since the summer to dispose of of drinking water.
Some are forced to spend their own resources on these transports that dry up municipal budgets, and others, especially those on the coast, fear the arrival of summer, when in many cases their population triples and, with it, the demand for water.
The outlook is therefore not rosy, and at ERC they are aware that poor management of palliative measures can undermine any chance of repeating at the Palau de la Generalitat. “The Government seeks complicity to save face”, several of the parties consulted agree, a perception that they see reinforced by the call for the water summit. "Socialization of guilt", the deputy of Citizens Marina Bravo called it.
The Government assures that it has been acting for months. "They are waking up now, but we have been managing the situation for many months, and the data supports us," they point out from the Generalitat. They argue that in the previous drought, that of 2008, with 16 months of abnormal rainfall, the water reserves were at 20%, and today they are at 27% with 30 months of scant rainfall. The Pla de Sequera was activated in October 2021. But in the opposition, and even from the city councils, the low investment execution of the ACA is pointed out. According to his report, as of December 2022 it was 34%, while the Generalitat maintains that real investment reaches 71%.
The general criticism of the Executive of Aragonès is for the forms and for the substance. In the forms, for having approved, "without consulting and without consensus", a decree that imposes restrictions on six million inhabitants and includes a sanctions regime. They coincide in this perception from the local level, where mayors of municipalities of different political color and size point out "the fundamental attitude of the Government" with a decree in which "there is no economic proposal" that helps them undertake investments or alleviate the situation.
The PSC, whose leader Salvador Illa was in charge of managing the pandemic as Minister of Health, warns that "an emergency can only be solved with money." The parties are aware, as in the pandemic, that the responsible thing is to go to one, that is why the opposition is willing to give consensus a chance. The Government's parliamentary weakness is validated by the need for the opposition parties not to be singled out if they fall short of a necessary consensus.
In Palau they appeal to the socialists to, "as with the covid, put partisanship aside and work responsibly for the good of all." But the PSC recalls that the competence in terms of drought belongs to the Generalitat and that the degree of partisanship "will depend on whether the Government rectifies" its first steps, applies it with "dialogue and consensus" and puts investments on the table.
