The electoral tension and the reduction of the Tajo-Segura transfer heat up a new ‘water war’

The low level of the reservoirs, despite the latest rains, and the proximity of the regional and municipal elections on May 28 are about to revive the water war by the Tajo-Segura transfer, with unprecedented violence since in March 2018 thousands of irrigators demonstrated against the Government of Mariano Rajoy led by a PP baron, Fernando López Miras from Murcia. The internal fracture that such a sensitive issue generates in the two big parties has resurfaced after the driest year in decades, with the Spanish swamps at 34.3% compared to 51.1% on average in the same week in recent ten years. The PSOE and the PP resignedly assume the impossibility of establishing a party strategy in the face of the conflicting political, economic and social interests of Castilla-La Mancha and the Valencian Community (in the hands of the PSOE), and Andalusia and Murcia (of the PP).

A socialist leader from the Valencian Community points out that “the transfer is not an ideological question, it is territorial. It does not matter if you are from the PP or PSOE, it is an identity issue and causes you to defend different positions from those of your fellow party members in other affected communities. Tercia a popular deputy: “The regional financing has been pending renewal since 2014 and we do not agree, not even among ourselves, the same as in the PSOE, but the difference is that everything that surrounds water is much more passionate.” Water moves tens of thousands of votes that, agitated by pressure groups such as employers and unions and agrarian and irrigator associations, can determine the future of more than one regional leader on the night of May 28.

The euphoria of Emiliano García-Page and the indignation of López Miras over the increase in the ecological flow of the Tagus, and, therefore, the reduction in transfer, are two sides of the same coin. Where the socialist president of Castilla-La Mancha speaks of a “historic decision” to “truly save the Tagus”, the popular president of Murcia denounces an “axe” of 40% of the water transferred annually to the southeast of the country, a cut that represents “the greatest affront to the Region of Murcia in recent times by the Government of Spain.”

In both cases they respond to a sense of grievance that the opposition, whether from the PP or the PSOE, finds it very difficult to counteract. The leader of the regional PP in Castilla-La Mancha, Francisco Núñez, remains silent while trying to overcome the amendment to the General Budgets of 2023, that his party presented in Congress, the same as a year before, to increase the transfer . The general secretary of the Murcian socialists, José Vélez, vindicates the investments of the Government of Pedro Sánchez in the face of criticism in his community of the third vice president and minister of Ecological Transition, Teresa Ribera, for cutting the flow of transferred water. “The PSOE works to interconnect the desalination plants, so that there is an increase in the production of desalinated water, to reduce the cost of energy with photovoltaic plants and that irrigators have the water they need guaranteed at a reasonable price,” says Vélez.

Clashes between Castilla-La Mancha and Murcia

The main pulse of this new water war with multiple fronts, whether between the Government and barons of the PSOE and the PP or between territorial leaders who share a party, it is waged by Murcia and Castilla-La Mancha. López Miras has announced legal actions to avoid cutting the transfer, and García-Page recalls that several Supreme Court rulings and EU framework regulations endorse the reduction in irrigation for the primary sector of the Mediterranean arc. But no one is unaware of the electoral wave of votes that it can drag. Carlos Mazón, president of the Provincial Council of Alicante and of the PP in the Valencian Community, has warned that the water from the Tagus “is essential for the economic and social development” of his province, which borders Murcia. “The transfer is absolutely inalienable and we will always defend, through dialogue, the interests of irrigators and farmers”, the Valencian president, the socialist Ximo Puig, has had to set a profile.

The Tagus basin plan —with water reserves of 40.1%, below the average of the last ten years (46%)— contemplates that the ecological flow as it passes through Aranjuez (Madrid) rises to six to seven cubic meters per second from January 1, 2023, which becomes eight since 2026 and rising to 8.65 in 2027. “This would make agriculture in the area that depends on the transfer unfeasible,” predicts Javier Berenguer, vice president of the Central Union of Irrigators of the Tajo-Segura Aqueduct (SCRATS); “If our fears come true, there will be important mobilizations and the PSOE will have set up a water war, also internal between the Valencian Community and Castilla-La Mancha ”, he emphasizes.

Farmers remember their strength and roots in the area: according to SCRATS, the transfer generates more than 100,000 jobs and its agri-food industry contributes 3,000 million euros to the national GDP. Another fact that stands out is that the three provinces that benefit from the work, approved in 1968 and inaugurated in 1979 and 292 kilometers long, produce 71% of national exports of vegetables and 25% of fruit. A management success that has its contradictions and provides arguments for those who doubt the sustainability of the transfer: a SCRATS report acknowledges that this part of Spain, despite “suffering from a structural deficit of water resources, has been able to develop modern agriculture and productive and become one of the areas with the highest fruit and vegetable production in Europe”. Price is key: desalinated water is subsidized at 32 cents per cubic meter, although irrigators point out that once VAT is added, the toll for transportation and inflation rises to 45 cents. The water from the transfer is much cheaper: it costs about 13 cents, according to the irrigation union.

The proof that the Tagus does not have plenty of water is that the Ministry of Ecological Transition authorized in September a transfer of 7.5 cubic hectometres only for urban supply, unleashing protests in Murcia and Andalusia. The Government defends itself by pulling from the newspaper library: between 2014 and 2018, that is, with Rajoy in La Moncloa, 829 cubic hectometres were transferred through the Tajo-Segura aqueduct. Since Sánchez was president, the volume transferred has been 1,229 cubic hectometres.

Mistrust within the PSOE

In this context of scarcity, the conflicting positions feed mistrust. Even within the same PSOE. Nerves were exacerbated after the National Water Council on November 29, in which the draft royal decree of the hydrological plans for the Spanish river basin for the period 2022-2027 was endorsed. The Government’s intention is to approve it in the Council of Ministers before the end of the year, when it should be sent to Brussels. On paper, the problems should have been resolved. The document included a provision that establishes that the Ministry of Ecological Transition will evaluate, depending on the environmental situation, the application of the minimum ecological flows established in the hydrological plan of the Spanish part of the Tagus from 2026. In other words, that It would be automatic, which would give the PSOE a way out in the Valencian Community and in Murcia against their farmers, but what García-Page refuses.

The Secretary of State for the Environment, Hugo Morán, seems to have agreed with the president of Castilla-La Mancha. The number two de Ribera recalled on Wednesday in the Senate that there are “five sentences for which the courts are not going to let us go back.” All the communities involved interpreted it as a gradual increase in the ecological flow of the Tagus in the coming years. Morán justified it as “a procedure of progressive application that allows the infrastructure to be deployed to supply the decreases in flows, basically a consequence of the impact of climate change in the ceding basin, with desalinated water.” Some explanations that have put López Miras on guard but also the Valencian president, who is asking that what was approved by the National Water Council be complied with. “Without an agreement there will be no water. War only brings suffering and fracture. We, with all firmness, will defend the interest of the irrigators”, Puig warned. The socialist baron from the Valencian Community is the main objective of the PP in the May elections and he has made it clear to the Government that he will not admit that “there are rectifications about what is already written”. And even less with elections in which re-election is at stake just around the corner in which water has become a political weapon.