Ultimately, this is the story of a deception. Since 2019, the Supreme Court has been saying exactly the same thing: the application of the European Water Framework Directive forces Spain to change the way it manages its transfers. And he hasn’t said it once, no: if we talk about the transfer of the Tagushe has said it, at least, six times.
Despite this, the different administrations have been interpreting a political melodrama for years that has prevented the design of a system that minimizes the problems that the directive may create. And the result is that Murcians and Castilian-La Mancha They have been fighting for nothing for years.
Fortunately or unfortunately, this race forward seems to end on May 5.
What happens on May 5? If everything goes as planned, on May 5 the Supreme Court will decide the future of the Tajo-Segura Transfer and the Tajo Hydrological Plan 2022-2027. That day, the high court will decide what happens to the appeal of the Central Union of Irrigators of the Tajo-Segura Aqueductthe last major judicial process that remains open against the changes that the Government approved in 2025 to adapt to the regulations.
It is, so to speak, the last legal bullet left for the irrigators of the eastern peninsula.
And what can we expect? Bit. The president of the union himself, Lucas Jiménez, has publicly admitted ‘cold spirits’ and ‘without great expectations’, given the meaning of previous pronouncements.
And at this point, the issue being debated is whether the new ecological flows (which, according to the University of Alicante, will entail an average loss of 105 hm³/year from 2027) come into force now or may be staggered. But, the unpopularity of the measure in large areas of the country has caused everything to be postponed.
To the point that the National Court just admitted to processing Castilla-La Mancha’s appeal for the Ministry’s inaction in publishing the new rules: in fact, if Scrats’ appeal is overturned tomorrow, there will be no rules to apply the transfer.
And then? The conflict will enter a new phase: given the eventual rejection and with the transfer cuts legally consolidated, all that remains is to discuss technical details and compensation measures.
We must not forget that the Transfer supplies almost 150,000 hectares irrigation in Murcia, Alicante and Almería. This is water that is already de facto granted to irrigators and the State will have to compensate them. Although, of the 1,450 million euros that Moncloa committed to cushion the blow, it seems that only around 5% has been executed.
The story that never ends. We have been fighting over water in Spain for decades and we have been unable to create a system that reorganizes the country (and adapts it to real water). Almost the opposite: for more than 30 years, it has never been like this.
As explained in Datadista“since 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 they feed.” And the bill for all that is what we are paying now.
Image | Trent Haddock
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