[ad_1]
Many people were drawn to the town of Vacarisses, near Barcelona, in the 1970s by suburban dreams of houses with large gardens and swimming pools to provide respite during the long, hot summers.
But now that lifestyle is under threat as drought forces authorities to take increasingly stringent measures to conserve water, including a ban on filling ponds.
A law to be implemented in the coming days will prevent residents in the north-eastern region of Catalonia, including Vacarisses, from filling up empty pools even though a very hot spring suggests the coming summer will be similar to last year, wrong one of the hottest. in the notes. The law will not apply to public swimming pools or hotels.
Water management is a hot topic as Spain prepares for regional and municipal elections this month and a national vote later this year, as farmers and other industries compete for increasingly scarce resources.
Spain has one swimming pool for every 37 citizens, and this is also now in the spotlight.
In Vacarisses, a sprawling town of more than a dozen subdivisions with views of the Montserrat mountains, residents are bracing for another tough summer after experiencing a 16-hour water cut last year when the aquifer dried up.
Mayor Antoni Masana called the pool ban a “necessary measure” and stressed that the city is working to drill new wells.
“Because of climate change, we see less rain and less water. What we need to do is rethink, change our model to [new] reality,” said Masana.
Catalonia is one of Spain’s driest regions, with some reservoirs at just seven percent of their capacity. This April was the warmest and driest in Spain since records began in 1961, according to the meteorological agency AEMET.
More than 1,500 pools in the city
Vacarisses has gained regional fame due to the number of ponds. With a population of 7,000 and more than 1,500 registered pools, there is one for every five residents, although in urban legend, the number has doubled.
“When you go anywhere, people ask you where you’re from, and when you say Vacarisses, they say: ‘Oh, the city with 30,000 ponds,'” said Antonia Leon Garcia, a local resident. “It’s starting to get annoying.”
While her pool has been empty for five years since her children grew up, Garcia, 61, said the city has been unfair to the pool.
Most of the city’s ponds are rarely refilled and, if they are, usually with water shipped in from outside the city, he said.
Swimming pools are being used as a scapegoat for the lack of a coherent water policy in Spain, Garcia said.
He said authorities should invest in desalination and other purification plants to improve aquifers and reservoirs.
This is a sentiment shared by Gonzalo Delacamara, director of the IE Center for Water & Climate Adaptation in Madrid.
While using water to fill swimming pools during the dry season is irresponsible, most of Spain’s water resources are taken by the agricultural sector, which accounts for 70 percent of water use, he said.
Politics and the pool
According to Delacamara, Spain does not have a centralized policy on water management that could incentivize farmers to use more expensive desalinated water for irrigation, with decisions on water rates falling to local town councils.
It is a system “that is vulnerable to obscene modifications during the pre-election period where all the mayors promise cheaper water in the context of climate change and drought,” he said.
On the island of Mallorca, an average of 17 pools were built a week, or 880 per year, in 2015-21, according to a study by environmental NGO Terraferida.
Macià Blázquez, professor of geography at the Universitat de les Illes Balears, says the proliferation of pools is linked to the property boom in second homes, especially for northern Europeans.
Seeking to stem the tide, the Balearic government in December limited the construction of new pools in rural areas to one per property and with a water volume cap.
In Catalonia, a new law made an exception for public swimming pools, or those located in hotels or large building complexes, following pressure from the local mayor, who said that public swimming pools are “climate shelters” in a country that will experience hot summers. heat up. .
Vacarisses, meanwhile, continue to sell suburban dreams. On a vacant plot for sale near Garcia’s home, an advertisement, showing a house with a pool, reads: “The perfect place to build your future.”
[ad_2]
Source link