The road that leads from the A-7 motorway to the municipality of Arenas, east of Málaga, is a pure curve. There are no straights on the 11-kilometer route, which is not suitable for sensitive stomachs. The landscape is a succession of young avocado trees and old vineyards, dotted with hundreds of scattered houses. From the ground you can barely make out their names painted on rocks: Casa Giralda, Villa Serena, Las Palmeras… From the air the picture changes. A rectangle of sky can be seen next to each structure, as can be seen by looking at Google Maps. In this city with 1,156 inhabitants, according to the cadastre, there are 470. These are swimming pools in which only 2.4 inhabitants live each. This is the norm in a region, the Axarquía, where 13 of the 15 cities in Malaga with the highest infrastructure of this type per person are located. It is precisely the area that is suffering the most from restrictions due to the ongoing drought that has left the La Viñuela reservoir at historic lows, almost dry and under pressure from subtropical cultivation and tourism.
La Axarquía was one of the areas of Málaga where bricks found the best foundations at the end of the last century and at the beginning of the East. Councilors used it as their main source of funding and rolled out the red carpet for construction. Many of these houses were unplanned and some mayors eventually responded in court, but the houses were never demolished. Sometimes even their owners didn’t know they were building something illegal. In September 2019, the Andalusian government approved a decree legalizing the vast majority of the more than 60,000 irregular houses in Malaga and the 327,000 throughout the municipality. “But there are some who are still in limbo because the scheme imposed certain costs and restrictions, many have not yet started the procedures and those who have done so are relying on councilors who are barely staffed,” stressed Rafael Yus, spokesman for Ecologistas en Acción. , highlighting that the vast majority of these properties have a swimming pool, a status symbol, and that they can now be enjoyed for much of the year due to climate change and rising temperatures, as seen this October.
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The situation is different in urban areas. For example, in Arenas there is only one swimming pool. The others are on the field. “Before the problem of the subtropics, there was the problem of scattered houses,” recalls Yus, who counted more than 22,000 of these properties in the Axarquian area in a study published a decade ago. “It is paradoxical that the cities in this area are becoming more and more depopulated and yet there are so many swimming pools. It is clear that these are second homes and tourist accommodation,” emphasizes the environmentalist. These basins are filled with water from each locality’s supply network, as Jesús Vargas, doctor of geography, professor at the University of Malaga and member of the Citizen Drought Observatory, explains. “It is the same as for human consumption,” says someone who believes that the current drought crisis is due not only to these infrastructures, but also to the unplanned urban development model, subtropical crops and tourist pressure, especially on the coast . “It’s a mix of everything,” he says.
A truck company driver prepares to fill a swimming pool in Rincón de la Victoria, Málaga, García-Santos
Restrictions and water tanks
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Few mayors like to talk about the topic. Of the respondents, only one responded to EL PAÍS. “In our case, more than 90% of the pools use irrigation water,” says Alejandro Herrero, mayor of Frigiliana, where there are 3,009 residents and 1,040 pools, almost one for every three neighbors. The main reason for this spread here is tourism. According to the Junta de Andalucía, in this city there are 369 rural houses, 191 houses for tourist use, two tourist apartments and another 166 rural accommodations. A total of 734 with almost 4,000 places for visitors. “It is something fundamental on an economic level. And of course they are all registered, otherwise they could not appear in the records,” emphasizes the councilor, who believes that his community is lucky because it has its own aquifers and they have saved the summer without any problems for both human consumption. As for the avocados grown in its territory. “But we continue to look to the sky: rain is very necessary,” he warns, as the area awaits the construction of a desalination plant after the Junta de Andalucía and the central government recently reached an agreement to promote it.
Pool replacement work in Rincón de la Victoria, where there are restrictions and nightly water outages. Garcia Santos
Other places are sticking with the restrictions and nighttime water closures that began in the summer. These are those fed by the La Viñuela reservoir, whose capacity is already below 8%. It is its historic lowest point since it was filled four decades ago and a new record is set every week due to the lack of rainfall. The first cities to take measures were El Borge, Almáchar, Iznate, Benamargosa and Vélez-Málaga, which have a combined population of 90,000, at the beginning of July. Around them there are the most swimming pools per inhabitant, such as Alcaucín, Árchez, Canillas de Albaida or Cómpeta, all with one for every three or four inhabitants. To fill them, demand for barrels skyrocketed this summer. “It was impossible to meet all the needs of scattered communities or houses. And we had 23 cisterns in operation every day,” says Jesús Arranz, head of the company Aquatrans 2000, who explains that the water is not treated and comes from resources that would otherwise end up in the sea to complete the cycle. Today the pools are still being refilled, especially in the Rincón de la Victoria area, where restrictions remain in place, although with only four trucks.
The situation is repeated on the western Costa del Sol. Particularly noteworthy is Benahavís, the richest municipality in the entire province of Málaga with 2,107 swimming pools – 49 of which are covered – and 8,085 inhabitants; But Marbella in particular does it: it has 10,850 swimming pools for its 143,386 residents. After Madrid and Córdoba, it is the third largest city with the highest number. “Given the scarcity of water resources in the area and the 27 kilometers of beaches in the municipality, this is outrageous,” recalls Javier de Luis, spokesman for Ecologistas Malaka, who points out that the rains are filling the La Concepción reservoir less and less. that aquifers like Sierra Blanca are in worse condition due to high tourist consumption. “Water is a finite resource and the problem is waste: more controls are needed,” concludes the environmentalist. The Málaga Provincial Council has carried out a study to identify service gaps in Málaga’s 74 towns with fewer than 20,000 inhabitants. The result is that 7.5 cubic hectometers – 7.5 billion liters – are lost from municipal pipes every year. More than 100,000 people would spend that much per year.
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