The recognizable green of Cerdanya has given way to ocher and brown tones. Rainfall records, despite the most recent rains, are on track to be the lowest recorded for decades, according to data from the Meteorological Service of Catalonia. At the Das meteorological station, located at the aerodrome, until October 20 the lowest value of the entire series was recorded since 2007. And at the Puigcerdà observatory, the precipitation collected up to early October by a manual rain gauge of a private observer was the lowest in the last seventeen years. The latest rainfall has helped the headwaters of the rivers but they do not change much a scenario that remains critical.
La Cerdanya, like the rest of Catalonia, is experiencing one of the longest drought episodes that farmers can remember. “I don’t remember a drought as severe as this one. The Carol River is dry, the springs too; the earth is like ash”, exemplified a few days ago Xavier Jiménez, national coordinator of the Unió de Pagesos (UP) agricultural union, with cereal fields and cattle farms in Saneja, in the municipality of Guils de Cerdanya.
With the grain harvest almost lost, their concern is now with the cattle, which, after coming down from the mountain, do not have enough food. “I have collected less than a third of the cereal than in a normal year”, explains Jiménez, who is also worried about the fact that the agricultural insurance refuses to pay them what would correspond due to a lack of pasture. “Their reports reflect that there was no drought in August! How can it be! But if only 25 liters fell at the end of the month, that is a real misery”, said the farmer.
This summer the situation has been particularly critical in several municipalities in the region, one of which records the highest consumption in Catalonia, exceeding 200 liters per inhabitant per day, according to data from the Catalan Water Agency (ACA) .
In the middle of summer, the territory multiplies the population tenfold thanks to the large number of second residences. In Alp and Lles de Cerdanya there were water cuts in August when the reservoirs that supply the population were below minimum levels. Others such as Llívia, Bellver de Cerdanya, Fontanals, Prats i Sansor, Das, Urús or Puigcerdà made bans that prohibited watering gardens and filling swimming pools.
In the case of Llívia, the irrigation ban was daily from August 10 to avoid reaching a critical situation for mouth watering. “On the days of irrigation, 100 m3 were used, about 100,000 liters, and on the days when it was not irrigated, the figure dropped to 50 or 60 m3”, explains the mayor of Llívia, Albert Cruïlles.
The mayors note that, in general, residents and holidaymakers have complied with the restrictions imposed, with a few exceptions. Precisely to control consumption, Meranges or Urús have installed – or are in the process of doing so – digitized meters that make it possible to know how much each household spends. In the first municipality, which is the one with the fewest residents in the region (128 registered), the water collection network, which was very outdated, has also been renovated, according to its mayor, Eduard Isern. In fact, the region of La Cerdanya is the one that loses the most water from municipal reservoirs, whether due to leaks, fraud or reading errors. Specifically, they lose 53% of the water that comes out of the reservoirs, according to RAC1 in the spring. “We try to show solidarity with the water crisis that the country is experiencing and to be consistent with the expenditure of water”, says Maria Sans, mayoress of Urús.
Many of the second homes in Cerdanya have gardens with a type of lawn that uses a lot of water. “Some want to have their gardens like the Camp Nou”, says the mayor of Prats i Sansor, Xavier Picas, who urges to let the native grass grow, which needs less watering than the Swiss-type lawn or the red spruces. The mayor of Prullans, Albert Maurell, explains that for years building permits have been conditional on the adoption of water saving measures.
