Locals Catalonia

Some of many of the water struggles in Catalonia

Text: Karl Dkreixer. Ecologists in Action of Cataluña

The “struggle for the water” during the period from 1990 to 1998 in Barcelona was a good example of how a vital and common good raise passions. Progressive fees with affordable costs for the basic consumptions and the penalty charge for the excessive ones were achieved. Nevertheless the price controlled by AGBAR remained fixed.

In 2000 the Platform in Defense of the Ebro struggled for the river and its delta and stopped the water transfer to the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona and to the Mediterranean coastline within the framework of an offer on water, land and destruction policy ruled by the non-sustainable growth promoted by the big financial powers that speculate with the right to a house.

In the local areas of Girona the struggle is based on the recovery of the ecological water flow of the Ter river hijacked by the growth of Barcelona, against the destruction of the Costa Brava and the unsustainable growth of the swine industry which pollutes the aquifers. On the other hand in the upstream part of the Llobregat river Iberpotash is allowed to salinize and pollute the water with trihalomethanes.

The social and ecologists movilizations get on fighting in Catalonia for a policy of water demand control and for stopping urban growth and new irrigation plans as well as the profits of companies that do business with water making the most of it and polluting it, destroying the land or drying it and polluting rivers and aquifers.