The worst drought in history in Catalonia has once again put the water of the Ebro and the entire territory of the Terres de l'Ebre in the spotlight, in the final section of the river and at the strategic catchment point for the mini transfer from the Ebro to Tarragona, with a 35-year journey, started in 1989 to solve the historical supply problems in the Camp de Tarragona and the Costa Daurada.
History, sometimes stubbornly, repeats itself. In the drought of 2008, the tripartite Government agreed with the Government of Rodríguez Zapatero on the interconnection of the water from the mini transfer of the Ebro with Barcelona despite the almost total opposition of the Terres de l'Ebre. The rains came in the spring and the project came to a standstill.
The oldest people in the Ebro delta explain that the first day of generous rains is the beginning of the next drought. The current one, tougher than the one 16 years ago, puts the interconnection of the Ebro water network in Tarragona with that of the Barcelona metropolitan area back on the table.
The current government of the Generalitat rules it out, which relieves some of the pressure on a territory that owes its great value to the water of the Ebro. A complex and diverse society, the Catalan Ebre is once again feeling slighted, accused of being unsupportive.
"There is no water left in the Ebro"
The most repeated argument
The rains on the Ebro river above, in Aragon, Navarre or La Rioja, have allowed the reserves of the large reservoir of reference for the area of the Baix Ebre basin, Mequinensa, to be recovered. The swamp is at 79.5% after opening floodgates on Tuesday. The swamps of Riba-roja and Flix, already in the Ribera d'Ebre, are over 80%.
The situation is now favorable and makes it possible to guarantee the supply of drinking water to the municipalities in the province of Tarragona connected to the mini transfer. In the short and medium term, there will be no restrictions on domestic use, nor on industrial and tourist use, which are strategic in the Camp de Tarragona and the Costa Daurada.
The flow that goes down the river throughout its final stretch to the mouth is fundamental for the medium-environmental resistance of the Ebro delta. If the arrival of fresh water is reduced by the network of irrigation canals, this favors the salinization of the fertile soils of the plain, on both sides of the river. The claimed ecological flow is key.
The Ebro delta, in danger
Salinization and less land
"In the final stretch of the river, the resources have long been insufficient for the socio-economic and environmental maintenance of the area and measures such as the interconnection of networks would further contribute to making it unsustainable. The most threatened area in Catalonia is the Delta, where ten million square meters of land have already been lost", argues the Community of Irrigators of the Esquerra de l'Ebre.
The sediments also come down the river, one of the great deficits of the Ebro delta, which is losing ground to the sea. Part of the sediments are retained in the large reservoirs. The climate emergency, with storms such as Glòria (2020) or Filomena (2021), showed the fragility of the entire Ebrec wetland.
"There is no water left and we have a serious problem with regression, the land is increasingly salty and this requires fresh water. The scenario is different from that of 2008 because of climate change, very cruel; we had never seen it", warns Antonio Almudéver, president of the General Community of Irrigators of the Right Canal of the Ebro.
No water for the rice
Restrictions on irrigators
The irrigators of the two large canals to the right and left of the Ebro now have a guaranteed water concession, key to the sustenance of rice, which depends on the Hydrographic Confederation of the Ebro (CHE), a direct competition of the Ministry for Ecological Transition. In the next rice season, which starts in the spring, it will be possible to flood the fields and maintain the supply of irrigation water until the end of the summer.
The reality was quite different in the spring of 2023, when the CHE left the irrigators of the Ebro delta with only half of the water from the concession. The Mequinensa swamp fell to 35% of reserves due to the drought. The situation, unheard of, endangered deltaic rice farmers, who on average lost 30% of their crops.
"We come from restrictions that only affected irrigators, no one else", remember from the Community of Irrigators of the Left.
"This summer's restrictions have cost a lot of money. We only have water to survive. There is a lot of water deficit in the Ebro basin", highlights Almudéver, head of a community that irrigates 14,000 hectares and defends the interests of 2,000 irrigators. "We stayed, we ran out of irrigation water and the industry and tourism of Tarragona passed us by, they without restrictions, without suffering. What a paradox isn't it? And without compensation for our territory", adds Almudéver.
Mini transfer “sense excess”
The water that is not captured from the river
Joan Alginet (ERC), president of the Consorci d'Aigües de Tarragona (CAT), the entity that manages the mini-transfer, says that there is no surplus of water, as supporters of the interconnection maintain. "We don't have any water left over, all the water we have is available to the members of the consortium, it has assignees, the town councils and the industries. We don't have a tailor's drawer with leftover water where someone can take it," reasons Alginet.
The CAT has just presented its annual balance sheet and in 2023 it consumed 77.7 of the 94.7 Hm³ of the annual mini-transfer concession in Tarragona. 18% of the water in the concession is not used, thanks in part to the increase in the use of regenerated water by the petrochemical industry in Tarragona (5.9 Hm³). "Water that is not consumed is not taken from the river", highlights Alginet (CAT). It is a flow that is allowed to run downstream, to the mouth, which favors the ecological flow, one of the great workhorses of the Plataforma en defensa de l'Ebro (PDE).
When in 2008 the Government of the Generalitat agreed on the interconnection in an exceptional way to respond to the emergency, it was done starting from the water flow of the Ebro not used by the mini transfer. The CAT consumes on average every year around 2.4 cubic meters (m³) of water per second of the maximum of 4 m³/s that allows the catchment regulated by the mini-transfer law (1981). "The water for the mini transfer is collected from the canals, not from the river", highlights Alginet. A transcendent nuance. The two communities of irrigators in the Ebro delta share an annual compensation of four million euros, paid by the CAT, for ceding the water from the mini transfer to Tarragona. If you want to send this water outside the province of Tarragona, by ship or pipeline, it must be approved by the Central Government because the mini-transfer law does not allow it.
Irrigation communities
Feel the cracks of 2008
When the interconnection was approved in the previous drought, the General Community of Irrigators of the Canal de la Dreta de l'Ebre was from the beginning ready to negotiate with the Generalitat and the central government for the transmission of the part of the water not used by the mini transfer in Barcelona.
The Community of Irrigators of the Esquerra de l'Ebre, with a progressive tradition, ended up opposing the interconnection. The irrigators of the Ebro Basin agreed, however, to give water from the Ebro to Barcelona in the face of the emergency (2 m³/s).
The two communities of irrigators express themselves to La Vanguardia's questions against the interconnection, without hesitation. "We are opposed not only because it would solve the water deficit in the metropolitan area of Barcelona, but under a misunderstood concept of solidarity, it would accentuate the existing territorial imbalance even more," says the Community of Irrigators of the Left. "Unsolidarity is extracting natural resources from a territory, already in deficit, to manufacture them in another territory, favoring its development and exacerbating the historical territorial imbalance".
More territorial imbalance
Water generates wealth, outside
"No one comes to help us, they only remind us and agree when there is a lack of water", emphasizes Almudéver, from the community of irrigators of the right channel. The Terres de l'Ebre have historically seen large public and private investments pass by. While the water of the Ebro, its great value, was not able to become its own engine of development.
On the other hand, the water from the mini-transfer in Tarragona has indeed served to generate wealth and employment. Two major sectors have benefited: tourism and petrochemicals. Both breathe a sigh of relief when they see that they have a guaranteed supply and avoid restrictions despite the drought.
In the Terres de l'Ebre there is a very widespread belief that the current territorial imbalance with respect to the northern regions of Catalonia will grow even more if the Ebro water is connected to Barcelona by pipeline.
Irreversible connection
It won't just be for this drought
The interconnection pushed by the tripartite Government, with President José Montilla (PSC), between the CAT network and that of the Ter-Llobregat system, was planned with the commitment that it was only to respond to major emergency situations such as the drought of 2008. A connection that was also said to be two-way, that is, in the event of a lack of water in Tarragona and the Terres de l'Ebre, it could be used to send water from the Ter-Llobregat system to the south of country
The conviction in the Terres de l'Ebre, an argument shared by the majority in the regions of Tarragona, is that the interconnection, if it were to become a reality, would not only be for emergency situations in persistent droughts. "Once you've opened the pipe, everything goes towards Barcelona and you'd be the last", Almudéver, from the Community of Regants de la Dreta.
The fear is that the Ebro water would serve to facilitate the excessive growth of the metropolitan area of Barcelona, especially in the residential and tourist sectors. "The Ebro is not the solution to solve the problem of uncontrolled growth in the metropolitan area of Barcelona", says Susanna Abella, one of the souls of the PDE.
