For more than a month, when Garoé, Éowyn, Herminia and Ivo They synchronized to water the peninsula, the water level of Spain has been decreasing day by day. March has changed everything. In just one week, the accumulated water increased almost 3% and 2025 remains above the 2024, 2023 records and the average of the last 10 years.
Aemet He has already warned That comes more water and that “the long duration drought, in which Spain entered at the end of 2023 and that still lasts at the end of February, will also end up reversing most likely with what is raining” Ahroa himself.
And yet, the administrations have come out in Tromba … To say there will be no changes. Catalonia is the best example: although the reserves already exceed 40% and is, for good, in an unpublished situation for more than 50 months, the Minister of Territory and spokesman of the Generalitat, Silvia Paneque, He explained that the situation “It does not completely solve the situation we are living.”
In Andalusia the reaction has been similar. In fact, the Board has delayed Until the end of March or early April, making any decision on drought. In Murcia they go further and not only is not withdrawing measures, but they are working on Expand measures To stop the drought.
And, on paper, it makes sense. At the purely administrative level and as explained, for example, the Catalan Water Agency, from the pre -alert level, can be considered that The drought has sent. However, water stress problems in the interior basins of Catalonia, Segura or the Andalusian Mediterranean basins are systemic.
In that sense, no one advocates directly to withdraw control measures and restrictions. The problem is that with that it is not enough. And it is not enough because the fact that the restrictions are not removed means nothing. Moreover, it can be even worse.
We know it from experience. I quote it often, but Datadista has a fantastic investigation In which it looks very clearly how “from the deep drought of the 1990s, each dry period has served to implement emergency measures (…) or allow practices that were not eliminated when the rains returned, they were used to expand irrigation, increasing the problem of overexploitation and contamination of aquifers and the wetlands to which they feed.”
That is, the fact that administrations resist raising prohibitions does not serve much if that surplus takes advantage of efficiency improvements to implement policies that, ultimately, “make the country’s water system more fragile” instead of favoring that becoming more robust.
The most important drought happens when drought ends. That is the great historical lesson that can give us the water management of Spain: that the crucial is what happens when the weather drought has disappeared and we have to make decisions about what to do with all that water we did not have before.
In that context, prudence calls are interesting and necessary. But they need a transition plan behind, but we will simply be building closer and closer to that cliff called climate change.
Image | ECMWF
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