The decision of the Generalitat to prohibit the filling of private swimming pools with fresh water is impacting the sector dedicated to construction, maintenance and repair, an activity that generates a turnover of around 1.5 billion euros. The Spanish headquarters of the European network of independent professionals in the pool sector, the Hydrosud Group, estimates the drop in pool construction in the last year as a result of anti-drought measures between 20% and 30%.
Although in recent weeks the Generalitat has relaxed some of these restrictions, such as allowing the use of water from private desalination plants to maintain the economic viability of companies linked to the tourism sector, private swimming pools are currently outside this exception. With the law in hand, they cannot be refilled unless it is with seawater and they are emptied without connection to the sanitation network so as not to damage the operation of the treatment plants.
Beyond the decline in sales, the sector has also noticed a sudden slowdown in orders. “Waiting for what happens, we have had many budgets paralyzed for months, there are many people lost who do not know what to do, or with the pool half built,” explains Jordi Julià, head of the company Groupe Deco, based in Agullana, and president of the Hydrosud Group, an entity that is part of the Spanish Association of Pool Sector Professionals (Asofap), the Spanish employers' association for the pool sector.
The professional notes some paradoxical and “incongruent” situations that have occurred in this drought scenario. He explains the case of a client who wanted to carry out repair work on his swimming pool and hired a tank to extract the water while the workers carried out the work. Once the work was completed, he was unable to refill the glass with the water he had previously extracted.
Professionals consider that there are “realistic, viable and respectful proposals” with the drought and the environment that the Generalitat should allow to guarantee “the survival of the sector.” Among other things, they propose allowing the use of fresh water from desalination plants, wells, mines or rivers from areas or countries where there is no shortage of the resource, such as France or Aragon. “The administration is preventing us from this solution, when there is no legal motivation to justify it,” says Julià.
They also consider it “nonsense” that the surplus water from the Ebro River is not allowed to be used, and they also propose as a shock measure that water be collected from the mouth before it ends up in the sea, by placing collection points at a distance of between 200 and 500 meters from the sea.
The pool construction and repair sector in Catalonia has more than 600 companies, many family-owned. This is the case of Piscines Vilabertran, where almost half of the employees are part of the same family. Cristina López recognizes a drop in construction volume in the last year, after the boom caused by covid. “Last year we already noticed a recession and this year we see that people have a lot of doubts,” he acknowledges, and highlights how the demand for pools that run on seawater has grown, although the investment is much greater, as well as the adaptations of the machinery to use salt water.
Also in Aiguapolis Figueres they answer almost more questions than sales. “The only option for now is filling with seawater, but we demand a definitive solution that allows us to go look for water in places where there is no drought,” says Víctor Blasco, who estimates the drop in construction at 20%. According to Asofap, fresh water from swimming pools in Spain represents 0.5% of the total water supplied.
