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The water from the Tagus is going to stay in Castilla-La Mancha. So Alicante and Murcia already have a plan B: set up desalination plants

January 17, 2026 by usatoday24

Water management in the Spanish Levant is not only a question of engineering, but a political and territorial battle that is released in each cubic hectometer. While the reservoirs at the head of the Tagus fluctuate and the rules of the game change in the Madrid officesthe Segura Basin tries to shield its survival through technology. With the Tajo-Segura Transfer in the regulatory spotlightthe Government has been forced to accelerate its “plan B”: converting sea water into the lungs of European agriculture. Green light to the preliminary projects. The Segura Hydrographic Confederation (CHS) already has on the table the design of the two desalination plants that promise to give a break to the Cuenca Plan. Mario Urrea, at the head of the organization, has signed the contracts to draw up the preliminary projects for works that will cost 1.34 million euros in the technical phase alone. However, the plan has already collided with local political reality. According to local mediathe exact location of the plant planned for the left bank (Torrevieja area) is a point of friction: the Torrevieja City Council and the Generalitat Valenciana have already expressed a “frontal rejection” of the possibility of the new plant being installed in said municipal area. To avoid this premature shock, the CHS refers generically to the “surroundings of the La Pedrera reservoir”, although technically the most viable thing would be to locate it next to the existing plant in Torrevieja, very close to the sea. The puzzle of numbers. The objective is to achieve water guarantee criteria, but the details reveal notable confusion in the scope of the plan. While the Government initially pointed out to a 100 hm3 plant for the Torrevieja area, the current specifications reduce that figure by half, placing it at 50 hm3. However, planning suggests that, adding the capacities of both facilities, up to 150 hm3 per year could be contributed to the system. The surgical distribution of this unconventional resource will be structured as follows: Right Bank Desalination Plant (Águilas): It will produce 50 hm3 annually. Of these, 33.5 hm3 will be used to relieve overexploited underground masses such as Alto Guadalentín and Mazarrón, while 16.5 hm3 will reinforce direct supply in Lorca, Totana and areas of Almería. Left Bank Desalination Plant (Torrevieja): With a projected production of up to 100 hm3 (according to the horizon of the basin plan), it will allocate 58.5 hm3 to alleviate the undersupply of the Cartagena and Alicante Field (Albatera, San Isidro), in addition to dedicating 41.5 hm3 to the recovery of aquifers such as Cabo Roig. A divided plan under the stigma of energy. The project has been divided into two strategic lots with an initial execution period of 12 months for its drafting. The lot on the right bank has been awarded to the company Typsa for 674,575 euros, with the mandate to study its connection with the existing desalination plant in Águilas. For its part, the lot on the left bank has been awarded to Ayesa Engineering for 669,286 euros, with the mission of connecting the infrastructure with the La Pedrera reservoir to distribute water through the post-transfer channels. A critical aspect is sustainability. Both preliminary projects must necessarily include the design of photovoltaic solar plants to reduce the high electrical cost of desalination. However, this point raises skepticism: as the local press remembersthe Government has not yet managed to materialize the solar plant in 2024 for the current Torrevieja desalination plant due to lack of location. The time factor: an insurmountable obstacle. Despite the signing of these contracts, the solution will not be immediate. The Ministry estimates that these desalination plants will take between five and six years to be operational, given that after drafting the preliminary project comes a complex phase of environmental processing, public information and possible expropriations. For irrigators, this calendar is “unaffordable”. They find themselves trapped in a temporal clamp; While climate change and the new transfer rules impose cuts today, the promised alternative will not arrive, in the best of cases, until the beginning of the next decade. Water peace or temporary truce? The commitment to desalination is the central axis of the Ministry for the Ecological Transition’s strategy to close the Segura water gap. However, with the transfer rules about to change and an execution of works that is projected into the next decade, the new desalination plants are born in a climate of technical and political uncertainty. The signature of Mario Urrea puts the paper on the table, but water—and territorial peace—still seem to be far away on the horizon. Image | CHS Segura Xataka | After the rains, the battle between communities begins: the Tagus is full and the Segura basin is already demanding its water

It is a sign of all the problems that corner the Tagus basin

March 21, 2025 by usatoday24

Yesterday, the Manzanares S riverIt could significantly The high risk threshold of overflow in Madrid. It is not just an “alert”: the river It has overflowed In the brown, the connection branch between the M-30 and the M-40 was cut for hours, but there are Almost another dozen roads that are still cut by the storm. As it happened In Seville a few days ago, In Guadalajara last week either It is happening in Toledo Right now, it is very striking. Above all, because it is something that goes far beyond Manzanares. What is happening? What are we seeing? And it is that the Manzanares is only a sign of endless problems that face the basins of the Tagus and that of the Guadiana: rivers that usually carry very little flow and that, suddenly, channel a huge amount of water. And, as we said yesterday, the problem is never just the water that falls: the problem is, above all, that water has to go somewhere. But it is not easy. For many reasons: the first is that ‘natural’, these types of floods are usually accompanied by landslides, phenological realignments and other geological phenomena. The rest, unfortunately, are of human origin. For decades, we have been building around the channels as if the water they carry out all the water they can carry. We have narrowed the alluvial plains, we have built In flood areaswe have raised concrete structures that today (with these accumulated) are unable to contain the strength of the rivers. Manzanares is news because it is in Madrid, yes; But it is also news because it will affect hundreds of thousands of people; And, above all, it is news because it is a very clear example of what is happening in the center of the Peninsula: problems, many problems. The great paradox, again. As We said a few days agothe great paradox that brings us climate change is that we have to prepare to survive periods of increasingly long and intense droughtwhile we plan infrastructure and plans against increasingly intense floods. Talavera is a good example. According to the Center for Public Works Studies and Experimentation From the Government of Spain, the average flow of the Tagus in March as it passes through the Toledo city is 188 m3/s. Right now it is 750, now has overflowed at many points and the City Council is convinced that it will be up For the rain. And what do we do? That is the big question. Because, As the meteorologist Jordi Carbó explained“We have fallen into a difficult dynamic to break.” Although it is true that the ECMWF Start drawing some deceleration of rainfall, “forecasts prologize the rains until the beginning of April.” That is, “it is very likely that in this month of March there will be excellent precipitation records” and, in a context in which March It is becoming more and more rainyit is crucial to take it into account. But right now it only remains to remember. Today the urgent is to take action, displace people who can be affected and contain the damage. Tomorrow the important thing is to take it into account and put ourselves to work so that the next flood caught us prepared. Image | ECMWF | CGM Madrid In Xataka | It has rained so much in Spain that the reservoirs are up. And still nobody wants to remove water restrictions

Hundreds of years ago, no one saw a beaver in the Tagus. That has just changed and is not even the strangest of all

February 9, 2025 by usatoday24

The saddest thing that can be said of an animal can be said of the Iberian Castor: No one is very clear when it was extinguished. For years the researchers have discussed whether the last specimens disappeared in the seventeenth century, in the eighteenth or, even, in the nineteenth century to realize that all this was wet paper. But the only available evidence They place them in the second century BC. After that moment, nobody knows what happened to them. But something happened in 2003. In the spring of 2003 and illegally, someone introduced 18 European beavers from Bavaria. No one knows for sure who was or why he did it. In fact, They were discovered by surprise Thanks to “the existence of a series of indications, very conspicuous, that reveal the establishment of a small population of beavers in northern Spain.” What we do know is that, although it was tried to eradicate, it was not achieved. And now, he has overflowed the Bajo del Río Aragón course where he found himself and is now considered all the purposes An native animal subject to environmental protections. Beyond the Ebro. If the Pyrenees had worked as an effective barrier to the beaver, once the situation has entered the situation again. A few years later, we had found Castores in the Duero Basin and in the Guadalquivir. What we hadn’t found were still beavers in the Tagus. And in June 2024, two researchers They found themselves With them in Zorita de los Canes, province of Guadalajara. That is, more than one hundred kilometers in a straight line of the closest place where they had previously reported. What is happening here? Because if we stop to think for a moment, we will discover that this expansion of the beavers It is not natural. In 2023, Teresa Calderón biologist calculation that the beavers of Tormes would have taken 40 years to get there by their own means from the closest documented population. In the Andalusian case, or there is a way for these specimens to travel alone the 365 kilometers of southern submeta that are between the stretch of the Guadalquivir where they were found in 2023 and the closest point where we had previously found them. The only rational explanation is that Someone is putting them there. “Beaver Bombing”. Thus (“Bombing of Castores”) is what is called a little rare practice for years: to release groups of illegally managers in areas where they had supposedly lived. And they not only do it without permission: they do it without previous studies, or guarantees, or planning. “As the IUCN establishes, to make a reintroduction of any extinct animal in a territory it is necessary to carry out a series of studies that are almost common sense,” Francisco José García rememberedBiologist and expert in mammals from the climate semm, “we have to know why they were extinguished at the time, under what conditions the animals lived then and if these conditions are maintained. And we must work on the social perception of the species, You can’t do your back things to society. And then? The problem, as happened with The reintroduction of the wolfgetting that “social and political support” is complicated and some groups have decided not to wait. The story gives for A rural thrillerbut he raises many doubts about what will happen in the future. Not only if Castor’s communities will grow in Spain, but this practice will be extended to more species. Image | Svetozar Cenisev In Xataka | Franco introduced an exotic sheep in the Teide to content the hunters. Now it is ending its ecosystem FacebookTwitterFlipboardE-mail

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