Tania Liñan Luna

Unit 4: TERRITORIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ROLE OF WATER IN

SPAIN
1. Iberian ocean and seas
Water is the most prevalent fluid on Earth (covering 71 % of the surface), the basis of
all life -in fact, terrestrial life was born in the water-, and the most important natural resource,
especially in the dry environments, as Mediterranean. The water evaporates at the
atmosphere, where it rushes off over the ground, forming rivers, lakes, aquifers, and oceans.
It is used by all living things, returning later to the atmosphere again. This process is called
the water cycle.
From the human geographical point of view, many of our settlements are next to
water courses or/and coast.
The Mediterranean is a small and closed sea, in the direction of the Parallels, and
influenced by subtropical High pressures. Its waters are quiet, temperate, and with many
hours of sunshine, which causes high evaporation and salinization. Wave and tide are small,
in comparison with large oceans, as Atlantic, which allows that the rivers build up deltas in
their mouths. The Mediterranean supports an intense commercial and tourist activity.
Overfishing, and industrial pollution are its main environmental issues.
The Atlantic is a large and open ocean, in the direction of Meridians. Its waters have
less temperature and salinity tan Mediterranean. On the opposite side, Atlantic has big waves
and strong tide, so rivers have estuaries in their mouths. The Atlantic Ocean is an important
transport link and fishing area. In Spain, it has less tourist activity and pollution than
Mediterranean.
2. Spanish rivers
There are three basins in the Peninsula:
Cantabrian coast.
Its rivers are small, due to the short distance between mountains and sea. The steep
slope gives them a high erosive power. Their flow is abundant, thanks to the intense rainfalls,
and the water regime is regular, because there is not drought in the oceanic climate. The main
use of the Cantabrian reservoirs is the production of hydroelectric energy.
Atlantic coast.
These rivers are long, due to the slope towards the west of the Central Plateau, and the
remoteness of the mountains where their sources are. They have an irregular water regimen,
with summer low –due to the Mediterranean drought- and two equinoctial maximums.
Mediterranean coast.
As in the Cantabrian sector, its rivers are short, except the Ebro. They produce high
erosion, by the combination of Mediterranean climate -with its alternance between drought
and torrential rains- and deforestation, which fail to protect the land, modeling a landscape of
badlands on the clay soils. The water regime is very irregular, with summer low and autumn
flood, caused by torrential rains from the COLDs, or cold drops. The reservoirs are built not
only for supply (human and farming), but for defense against floods too. Wadis (ramblas) are
a specific type of water courses.
Ramblas or wadis are in the whole Mediterranean coast of Spain, predominantly
where mountainous chains are close to the coast. They are caused by Mediterranean and

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subdesert climates and geological characteristics of the ground. Wadis are usually dry, and
they can remain so for many years, until the area receives a torrential rainfall of at least 100
mm in 24 hours. They work in two types of events. The first type, typical of summer-early
autumn, is produced by intense rainfall concentrated at the beginning of the storm. The
second type, representative of winter and spring, corresponds to less intense events, and
although they accumulate more rain, maximum intensities are lower and occur at the end of
the episode.
Wadis were used, during the pre-modern times, as natural ditches of the walls of the
cities, as Barcelona. Currently, most of them are underground channeled, but the name of
rambla remain in the street maps, as in Barcelona or Alicante. In other cases, they are merely
open-air channeled. Finally, Wadis can be developed as urban open/green areas, as in
Almeria.
The determining factors of the river’s behavior are:
● The climate (main): it determines the flow rate and the water regime, which can be
snowcapped, rainy, or mixed. As it was told, there is a strong contrast between
Atlantic and Mediterranean rivers.
SNOW CAPPED WATER REGIME: it is typical of the mountain rivers, whose regime is
determined by melting, which produces, with the rain, their spring maximum. They have a
secondary autumn maximum too. In contrast, minimum is during the winter, when the water
is retained as snow or ice. Pyrenean rivers have this snow capped regime.
MIXED WATER REGIME: rivers between 1,600-2,500 m. Their maximum is between
March and May. They have less deep summer low than the rainy rivers.
RAINY WATER REGIME: it can be Oceanic or Mediterranean, according to so deep and
long is the summer low water. The maximum levels are equinoctial. The more they are
similar and together, the river is more Oceanic. It is the case of the Galician rivers, which
have not winter lower water level. On the other hand, Mediterranean rivers have both
maximums separated by a deep summer minimum. The subtropical rainy water regime rivers
have a wider summer low level, from May to November.
● Relief: it determines the organization of fluvial network, its process of gradual
erosion, the formation of lakes, and the possibilities for dam.
● Lithology: it can support the surface run off, or the filtration and the formation of
aquifers.
● Vegetation: it retains the moisture, reducing evaporation. It defends the soil too,
decreasing erosion.
● Anthropogenic action: it affects the vegetation, removing or increasing it; it regulates
the fluvial network through public works; and, finally, it consumes the resource too.
The flood hazard is high in many parts of Spain, especially in the Mediterranean
rivers, due to the higher torrential nature of their rainfall1 . It is the most dangerous hazard in
Spain: 98 % of the whole economic impact of natural hazards is caused by floods.
Flood is a body of water which overwhelms lands that are not normally submerged.
Floods cause various economic loss: human lives, crops, livestock, properties, urban fittings,
and, finally, the deterioration of the sewerage system, which pollutes drinking water and
generates epidemics.

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There are natural and human factors which influence the occurrence of floods. The
natural factors are intensity or torrential nature of rainfall, slopes, and whether aquifers are in
headwaters. Torrential nature of rainfall is estimated by the ratio of the highest daily rainfall
to total annual. In Almeria, this index of torrential rainfall is 25 %. But, in Spain, it is
necessary to consider not only the natural hazard, but the human or social vulnerability too,
because there are many land uses in the floodable areas, mainly residential and intensive
farming.
Human factors are:
● Deforestation, both in headwaters and riparian forests.
● Occupation of the floodplains with roads, urban land uses, etc, which hampers the free
flow of water, and increases the damage that floods cause.
● Too much flood defense works, channels, and straightening of rivers, which reduce
the abatement of the flood.
Flood hazard is higher too from Murcia to Catalonia, and Balearic Islands, all of them
affected by autumn cold drops, or cut-off low dynamics (COLD), but in Andalusia and
Canary Islands too. Over the last years, the flood hazard has been more coastal, so authors as
Olcina (2016) have written about the litoralisation of this hazard. In the context of the climate
change, it is expected that floods in these Spanish Mediterranean coastal areas will increase
(IPCC, 2007a & b), although Olcina (2016) says that this is not scientifically sure, and that
the increase of impact of natural hazards in Spain is really due to the rising of the
vulnerability, especially, by the large amount of houses built in the Mediterranean coast (57
% of the whole national growth, with 12,000 new houses per year in the Province of Alicante
during the Property Bubble, 1998-2008), some of them in floodable areas.
A very representative study of the methodology for studying historical floods is
Gil-Guirado et al. (2021), on the three largest in the city of Murcia in the last 400 years.
3. Lakes, wetlands and groundwater.
There are many lakes in Spain, but they are often small, and most of them seasonal.
Attending to their origin or cause, these lakes can be endogenous, exogenous, or wetlands.
The ENDOGENOUS LAKES are produced by internal forces of Earth. They can be
tectonic, modeled by faults and subsidence of blocks; or volcanic, occupying extinct craters.
The EXOGENOUS LAKES are caused by erosion. They can be: glacial lakes, karst,
endorheic, or coastal, closed by sandpits created by the confluence of continental sediments
and the sea strength.
The WETLANDS are areas of shallow water. There are few in Spain, many of them
intermittent, but they are biologically unique, local as well as global, due to, respectively,
their rich biodiversity, and their role as rest areas for the bird migrations Northern
Europe-Equatorial Africa.
The ground water is stored in aquifers by infiltration or percolation. They can be in
limestone or sandy grounds. There are more than 400 aquifers in Spain, very important for
the supply of islands. These waters are very pure, but they are victims of overexploitation and
pollution, caused very mainly by intensive farming, especially in Andalusia and Murcia. In
the coastal aquifers, this overexploitation produces their salinization, because when the
underground water pressure level goes down, the seawater comes in, and once that happens,
there is no solution, a process called marine intrusion.

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4. The problem of drought.

The World Meteorological Organization proposes as drought when there are more
than two consecutive years with 60 % less of average rainfall. The droughts are cyclical, but
not regular, in the Mediterranean climates. In Spain, during the driest months, the country
receives million tourists in the coast of the dry regions, so the demand increases when less
water is at disposal. The severe droughts can cause water-use restrictions in many places,
large losses in farming, and the increasing of the number of wildland fires and their size. The
climatic change is producing that droughts are more frequent in Spain.
The ancient droughts can be researched studying vegetation, and historical sources
too, as chronicles, or the rain prayers named pro pluvia. The oldest historical reference to a
drought in Spain was in 941, about the surroundings of Cordoba.
The rainfall is very different between Northern and Southeastern Spain, or wet and
dry. Inland and Mediterranean Spain have a water deficit, due to:
- The Mediterranean climate, where the drought is practically almost every summer. -
The coincidence of droughts with the periods of peak demand.
- The large and increasing farming consumption. For instance, the irrigated land in the
Guadalquivir basin increased 45 % from 1992 to 2005. It should be note that farming
is, by far, the largest consumer of water in Spain, as in many Mediterranean countries.
- The losses in the distribution network. Some of the reservoir water evaporates,
especially in the hotter regions, as Murcia. There are 701 Hm3 /year of lost water in
the urban supply network too, 19.7 % of total water supplied to these urban networks,
but 30 % in Balearic Islands or Murcia, precisely two of those with the higher deficit.
5. Water as a resource: exploitation and conflicts.
The average natural availability of water in Spain is around 2,000-2,500 litres per
person and day, for all those urban, industrial, and farming uses. Around 67 % of total water
use is for irrigation in agriculture. In Castile La Mancha, farming consumes 95 % of total
water, in contrast to 63 % in Greece, or 59 % in Italy.
Spain is the European country with highest urban water consumption: 250
l/person/day, 157 for domestic use; the rest is for public uses, and consumption of small scale
enterprises in the urban areas. Historians have calculated the water consumption in the
ancient city of Rome in 427 l/person/day. Cantabria (189), Extremadura (187), and Valencia
(186) are the regions with highest consumption of water. On the other side, Basque Country
(125) and Navarre (126) have the lowest values. In Spain, the water use is seasonally very
variable. For example, it is around 250 l/person/day in Alicante, but it increases until 375 in
summer.
It is estimated that an urban dweller requires around 120-150 liters of water per day. A
judgment of the High Court of Justice of Catalonia established the minimum daily
requirement in 125 liters per person.
Scientific literature signs that domestic use of water is narrowly related with its cost.
For instance, Madagascar has a price around 30 €/m3 and a consumption of 5 l/person/day
(near the biological minimum), and United States 0.40 € /m3 and around 500 l/person/day.
Average cost of water in Spain is 1.29 €/m3 , 0.75 for supply, and 0.54 for treatment. Prices
are very varying, not only among regions, but great cities too, from 0.48 €/m³ in Castellon to

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2.70. On the contrary, agricultural irrigation water has a price of 0.002-0.35 €/m³. As a
reference, prices in Europe are very higher, as 2 €/m³ in Brussels, 2.5 €/m³ in London, or 4.5
€/m³ in Copenhagen.
But there are cases in which this relationship is not verified. For example, if we cross
water cost and average consumption in the Spanish regions, because other factors have an
influence, as the climate or the awareness and social involvement of citizenship.
The expansion of the urban model of detached houses with private pool and garden
has produced an increase of water use. In the case of Barcelona Metropolitan Area, from
128.6 l/inhab/day to peaks of 400.
The water deficit/drought in almost all the country, the spatial dissociation between
producing and consumer regions, and the mountainous relief, with abundance of suitable
locations, compel to build large infrastructures for the storage and transport of the water.
According to Smith, "Spain was the cradle of modern dam construction". This is a continuity
in the history of Spain: management tradition of Roman-Muslim origin, whose first dams
date back to the 15th century in Extremadura, to the 16th century in Levante, and to the
thirties of the 20th century in the rest of the country, especially on the Mediterranean side,
which followed the Costa’s regenerationism of the late 19th century. 22 dams were built
annually, on average, in the 1960s, once the previous precariousness of resources was
overcome, and thanks to the impetus of the hydroelectric industry.
Spain had 1,531 dams in 2015, 1,062 of them large: 9th in the global ranking, led by
China, USA, and India. It supposes 3,249 km2 occupied by this use, equivalent to the surface
area of the province of Alava. The total reservoir capacity is 63,818 Hm3, equivalent to two
years of consumption of the whole country. Only a hundred reservoirs account for 98 % of
this reservoir capacity, the largest being that of La Serena, with 3,219 Hm3 . 75 % of this
reservoir capacity is dedicated to supplying irrigation, 15 % to urban supply, and 5 % to
industrial use. Energy production is 18,319 MW.
But dams have several negative environmental impacts, such as:
- Occupation/immersion of mountain valleys, including their urban settlements, and
cultural heritage values such as the landscape, or the traditional irrigation systems.
- Ecological impacts on living aquatic resources, whose ecosystem is divided, and loss
of the gallery forest, with its higher biodiversity.
- Reduction of sand flows from rivers to beaches and deltas, and seawater
encroachment in the river mouths. This reduction of sand is very important in a
touristic country as Spain because it obliges to restore the beaches, which loss wide
against the sea.
- Finally, the increase of water supply through the building of hydraulic works produces
a rise of demand and the investment to exploit the promised water in the receiver
areas, even before the building of the new infrastructures. So, it can happen that the
water deficit increases after the building of the new infrastructures.
About water pollution, in Spain this is caused not only by urban uses but by farming
too, especially with nonpoint source pollution, caused by the supply to crops of fertilizers and
plant protection products solved in water, which percolate to underground with their waste,
being extended dozens of kilometers. Water scarcity compounds its pollution.

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Desertification is underway in 1 % of the Spanish territory, but around 30 % of land

has already been degraded. Desertification progresses in places where excessive watering
takes place, such as the new olive groves in eastern Andalusia, the farming fields of La
Mancha where the Jucar and several other rivers are drying up, and in the Ebro Valley. But
the area in most serious danger is by far the 30,000 hectares of land in and around El Ejido, in
Almeria, a sea of plastic greenhouses devoted entirely to growing fruit and vegetable crops
for export to Europe.
The intensive agricultural activity here is depleting the aquifers and raising salt levels
in the soil, bringing El Ejido ever closer to becoming the Spanish version of the Niger Delta
in west Africa, which was a textbook case: a long period of rains in the 1960s created a fertile
cropland that attracted many immigrants to the Delta. Aggressive agricultural techniques
were introduced, but a terrible drought came later, and the business floundered. The same risk
is very real in El Ejido because salt levels go up, and the area can become desertified.
Growers in the area are aware of the threat. If back in 1981 local growers used 230
Hm3 of water a year to irrigate 10,000 hectares, these days they use just 120 to water a
surface area three times as big. The trouble is that they have been digging for decades, going
down as deep as 600 m. Desalination of sea water is expected to be the solution. So, a new
plant is operational from July 2015 at Campo de Dalias, which contributes 20 % of required
water.
The Doñana county is another place with serious problems of overexploitation of
groundwater for the irrigation of intensive farming fields, with almost 10,000 unlawful wells
when the Regional Government quantified them. Some of them, whose illegality has been
declared by the Andalusian High Court of Justice from 2017, are being closed now, but there
are protest mobilizations of irrigation farmers, who claim more water from the new transfer
from the Tinto-Odiel-Piedras basin, which will increase from 4.9 to 14.9 Hm3 /year and was
approved by the Andalusian Parliament in 2018.
There are disputes between Spain’s Autonomous Regions too, which escalated in the
2000s. Water resources are required in Valencia, Murcia, and Almeria to supply intensive
agriculture, but much of the dispute between regions has been over the use of the water for
the tourism sector.
Constitutionally, where rivers run through more than one of the country’s 17
Autonomous Regions, the decision to divert resources must be taken at a national level.
Catalonia and Andalusia were at the forefront of attempts by the regions to gain greater
control over water resources. In 2005 and 2007, respectively, their statutes extended the
regions’ autonomy awarded their governments greater power over its rivers, prompting
similar claims by other regions. These powers were not approved by the national
Constitutional Court.
The right-wing Popular Party (PP) advanced a National Hydrological Plan (PHN) in
2001, when it was in power. Based predominantly on diverting water from the north to the
south, it followed draft proposals in 1993 by an earlier PSOE government. However, it was
opposed by northern regionalists, who wanted the water for their own economic
development, as well as environmentalists.
Reforming the PHN under pressure from these forces, the President Rodríguez
Zapatero abandoned plans to divert the Ebro. Instead, his government promoted the building

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of desalination plants to turn seawater into drinking water. Spain now has 950 such plants,
providing 10 % of total water use.
Scientists have argued that desalination plants are a shortsighted measure that could
exacerbate the crisis of water supplies in the areas at greatest risk of drought. They are
expensive to use, and energy intensive. The Worldwide Fund for Nature has argued that
desalination plants may themselves have a damaging environmental impact, increasing
salinity around the plant developments and destroying coastal areas. They also produce high
emissions of greenhouse gasses. The Spanish Association for the Technological Treatment of
Water says that each desalination plant indirectly produces one million tonnes of CO2 a year.
Llamas, of Madrid’s Complutense University, has blamed the crisis on low prices in
Spain, insisting that higher prices to consumers would limit demand. On its part, WWF is
encouraging the creation of water banks so that the rights to water can be bought and sold.