The President of the Generalitat, Ximo Puig, and the Third Vice President and Minister for Ecological Transition, Teresa Ribera, in Castellón in March last year. Domenech Castello (EFE)
The President of the Generalitat, Ximo Puig, and the Minister and Third Vice-President for the Ecological Transition, Teresa Ribera, are publicly exacerbating their disagreements around the Tajo-Segura transfer following last Wednesday’s demonstration by irrigators and politicians from Valencia and Murcia against Andalusians the government’s decision to establish an ecological river, which would mean a significant reduction in water transfer to the south-east of the peninsula. Both socialist politicians reiterate their positions a week before the Council of State issues its mandatory (but non-binding) report on the ministry’s decree-law to be approved by the government.
The decree contains the document agreed by the National Water Council on November 29 and was the subject of discussion. Ximo Puig defended this Thursday that the central government had changed the agreement reached at that meeting regarding the Tejo plan, a fact he described as “undeniable”. He explained that the Ecological Turn had approved a document with which the Generalitat “unambiguously agreed”. The proposal indicated that the flow would be updated in 2025 “depending on how the flow is at that time”. The ministry’s final plan is for the river’s ecological flow rate to increase from six to seven cubic meters per second as it passes through Aranjuez (Madrid) from January 1, 2023, to eight from 2026 and 8.65 in 2027.
“No one is more interested in making sure the Tagus is in the best conditions than we are. For this reason, the investment plan that the Ministry will carry out, which will have a direct impact on the upper part of the Tagus, seems very good to us. That it will be updated in 2025 based on water status is a matter of rationality that is quite difficult to debate,” he added.
However, he regretted that in this document, which the government sent to the Council of State, a body to which the Generalitat and other autonomies have submitted reproaches, an amendment was later made, some of which concern precisely this unilateral amendment. The text submitted to the Council of State does not include the ninth by-law agreed in the Water Council, which provides for this verification mechanism by water volume. “You have your right to change, but we also have our right to disagree,” declared the Valencian President in a statement to journalists in Orihuela (Alicante), one of those most affected by the cut of the Tajo-Segura Transfers affected cities in Alicante. The representative of the Generalitat did not vote against, but abstained due to the agreement to include this provision.
Finally, Puig called for a “meeting point” to find solutions and guarantee “water forever”. “For our part, we are right because the diverted water has created wealth and we are aware of adding other sources, but in a convenient way, out of common sense and without trying to fight water,” he concluded.
Agriculture Minister Isaura Navarro assures that the Secretary of State for the Environment, Hugo Morán, during a meeting with him last Wednesday after the demonstration, acknowledged that the agreed document had been modified. Sources present at the meeting indicate that the ministry bowed to pressure from Castile-La Mancha President Emiliano García-Page.
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majority approval
However, Third Vice-President and Minister for Ecological Transition Teresa Ribera said on Thursday that the proposal of the Royal Decree for Hydrological Planning 2022-2027, which the Government had sent to the Council of State for evaluation by the High Advisory Body, “that was, what was supported by the majority” of the National Water Council, recalling that both the autonomous communities and the sectors had three years to submit their ideas.
The minister acknowledged that Castile-La Mancha had accepted flows that “could not be” nor their quantitative, social and economic claim, but that they were necessary to guarantee the basins of the Tajo-Segura transfer a sufficient additional volume water that it must be applied incrementally so that the planned investments in more desalinated water, desalination plant interconnection, more recycled water and more efficiency “would bear fruit and there would not be any kind of tension and concern with irrigation plants”.
Because of this, he reiterated that the document issued by the National Water Council was a text containing the consensus to set the increasing flow for four years, monitoring both the quantity and quality of the Tagus water. And he pointed out that the “last minute” proposal of some Irrigation Communities and Autonomous Communities was rejected by the vast majority, so this proposal was not included, restoring the previous consensus.
Ribera assured that the criteria used to define the ecological flow of the Tagus are “exactly the same” used to define the rest of the river basin districts in Spain and that it is necessary to respect the laws and regulations.