Editor TLN
We talk a lot about the swamps and dammed water, but the key infrastructure for almost two out of ten Spaniards to drink is not upriver. It is on the floor. Spain is a country of aquifers. According to data from the Ministry of Ecological Transition, they cover more than 90% of the national territory.
This has a practical consequence: between 20,000 and 30,000 cubic hectometres of water that are renewed annually. The problem is that we are loading them.
We are drinking the underground. On the one hand, many aquifers (some as crucial as Doñana or Daimiel) are completely overexploited. That is, we are extracting water from the ground faster than nature can replace it. With the reserves dwindling, the ecosystems (natural, but also urban) that rise above these aquifers become more fragile.
As explained Mario Viciosa“Doñana has lost more than 80% of its marshes compared to the beginning of the 20th century”, yes. But the most worrying thing is that “more than half of its lagoons have dried up in the last decade.” In other words, during these last years of continuous drought, the overexploitation of the aquifer has brought the reserve to the brink of technical bankruptcy.
The same. Exactly the same happens with many areas of the country. As many regions are critically dependent on groundwater, its drying up carries a very significant water security risk.
Depth of groundwater wells in Spain / Scott Jasechko (Vía Sinc)
Especially if they are contaminated. Because that’s another. The agricultural sector consumes 82.5% of the water that is used in Spain and that means that a huge amount of water passes through land that is recurrently fertilized with nitrates and other fertilizers.
The result is that, according to the Citizen Network for the Measurement of Nitrates, almost 60% of Spanish groundwater is contaminated by nitrates. Other more conservative analyses, such as that of the Ministry, indicate that 40% would not meet the requirements of the European water directive.
Two Spains that are dangerously close. While overexploitation has been growing in the south, pollution has grown in areas where agriculture and, above all, macro-farms have been gaining weight. Andalusia, Castilla La Mancha, Extremadura are the big ones affected by the first problem; the entire Ebro valley and areas of Catalonia, Castilla y León, Mallorca or Gran Canaria, are for the latter.
A growing problem. Murcia is a great example of how the two problems come together. In this sense, Murcia is, more than ever, our future. Not only for a matter of scarcity of water and great weight of agriculture; but also because of the inability of their governments to address the underlying problem.
The eutrophication of the Mar Menor (and the thousands of dead fish and crustaceans on its shores) has been an example in broad daylight of what causes an excess of nutrients, causes a collapse in water quality. It is not the same process that occurs in groundwater bodies, but the same loss of quality.
Illegal wells in Spain (which are estimated at more than a million) and a lack of controls in a sector (as strategic as it is mistreated) such as agriculture, make the situation increasingly complex. The European Commission has the country on file and the call for elections has stopped any movement by the Ministry (which has failed to take advantage of the Doñana controversy to take the initiative).
In Xataka | Doñana has been facing an existential crisis for years (and nobody seems to care at all)
Image | Xataka with MidJourney
