Opening the tap and letting water come out is an unconscious gesture in homes in almost all of Catalonia. This is not the case of l'Espluga de Francolí (Conca de Barberà). Its nearly 3,700 neighbors began to suffer cuts in their drinking water supply in August 2022, every day except the weekend, from ten at night to seven in the morning.
Eight months have passed, and what began as a temporary restriction to be able to save the summer, between wave and heat wave, has become the norm. At night in l'Espluga the tap is closed. Impossible to shower, scrub, wash the dishes or put a washing machine, unless you have a deposit at home. To drink, bottled water if a jug has not been filled.
In the Els Caçadors café-bar, as in many other businesses, carafes mark the day to day, at a rate of fifty liters of bottled water per day just for the coffee machine. “The tap water tastes bad,” says Jonay Sánchez, one of the waiters, who explains how they manage. The bar is open until late at night, but they can't wash or wash anything after ten. “It is what it is, it is a sad situation for all the people. There is resignation, ”he says.
The drinking water comes to the town in tanker trucks since the summer of 2022, when the wells began to falter, with the aquifers at their lowest. While waiting for the desired rains, the City Council cannot make any forecast to restore normality. In the town, water has obviously become the great topic of gatherings. It is enough to walk through the streets and squares or have a coffee in one of the bars.
Resignation is the most shared feeling, but discomfort and a certain tiredness are also perceived. To the lack of supply at night, we must add that the taste and appearance of the water have worsened due to shortages and interruptions. "The water now has a bad taste and is a bit cloudy, I don't drink it," says Primitiva García, who arrived in l'Espluga 60 years ago. Although it is drinkable, many of the residents have now chosen to drink bottled water. Tap water, for cooking, cleaning or bathing.
“We shower less,” says 90-year-old Teodor Padilla, sarcastically. In the shopping cart he has gotten used to fussing with the jugs of water.
The City Council of l'Espluga has made the issue of water a priority issue. Its mayor, Josep Maria Vidal (Som l'Espluga), regrets that small municipalities feel alone in the face of a challenge such as drought. “We talk about water when there is a very brutal urgency and when it affects very large areas, but supra-municipal administrations have never seen it as a priority. We have a problem as a country”, warns Vidal.
In the middle of a spontaneous gathering, next to the Espluga house, a neighbor says hello and introduces himself. It is Francesc Sánchez, councilor in the opposition who is running for mayor (28-M). "The problem does not come from now, but as we were the people of the water... Now, todos a correr", he criticizes.
The actions undertaken by the City Council, such as the cuts and the hiring of tanker trucks, have for now guaranteed the supply of drinking water. The municipal government is carrying out, in parallel, a series of actions to solve the supply problem in the medium term. The most transcendental, the connection with the network that carries the water from the Ebro mini-transfer to Tarragona. Despite the fact that the works have already been approved and budgeted for, the water from the Ebro will reach l'Espluga in the best of cases in the autumn of 2024. The City Council is also looking for new wells to improve its own water resources and has obtained funds from the European Union (500,000 euros) to renovate almost four kilometers of old pipes, some from the sixties, and thus put an end to the constant losses. Some calculations estimate that about 200,000 liters of water are lost per day. The daily consumption of the entire town is 900,000 liters. “The improvement of the network will give us more water. We prioritize not losing a drop of water”, highlights the mayor.
Most of the leaks, with repeated breakdowns, occur in the Carreras urbanization, with a concentration of asbestos-cement or polyethylene pipes. In one of its streets, two neighbors walk their dogs. “I have put on a new tank. What remedy! When I get home from work, I want to shower”, they say. “Mine is 1,000 liters and he has a pump to have more pressure. Our grandparents already told us, you have to have a deposit at home”, says the owner of the El Llagut fish market.
Josep, known as Macario or Pep del Pou, has a 1,000-liter tank in the trailer of the truck. "To be able to water my garden and for the dogs," he says.
At one of the entrances to the town is ground zero for the severe flooding of October 2019, when the Francolí River overflowed its banks due to torrential rains, destroying part of the town and several businesses and causing the death of eight people dragged by the water in the Conca de Barberà. Right next to it are the Disset Fonts, seventeen fountains through which abundant water had always flowed. "Choose, you who spends, of the seventeen, if one or the other, playing with thirst", say the verses of Josep Ferré, next to the fountains. Not a single drop has come out for many months.
“We were the people of the water,” recalls Primitiva. "In l'Espluga we had never lacked water, it came down from the Prades mountains," adds Clàudia Riart, another 85-year-old neighbor. “Now when I get up, the first thing I do is look up at the mountain,” she explains. "That because? Because I'm afraid the forest will catch fire, it's all very dry”. It hasn't rained hard here for 31 months.
