INSTITUTIONAL REFORM TO DEVELOP WATER MARKETS IN SPAIN. The origins of the current institutional context for water resources management in Spain date back to the 1985 Water Act. In line with the prevailing hydraulic paradigm the Act was based on a supply-side approach, low water use fees associated with heavily subsidized water infrastructures, and water allocation through 75 year-long administrative concessions following a priority order for water use rights—with urban uses and irrigation in first and second position respectively, and other uses (energy production, industrial uses or navigation) below (Xxxxxx & Xxxxxxxxx-Xxxx, 2010; Xxx Xxxxx, 1996). Starting in the early 1990s, the emergence of three new and competing discourses began to undermine the hegemony of the traditional hydraulic paradigm (Swyngedouw, 2013, p.264): the reassessment of nature’s meaning and purpose; the accentuation of the commodification and privatisation of bio-political life through the pursuit of mercantilización (Xxxxxx, 2002 and 2010); and the scalar transformation of the geo-political relations around water supply, propelled mainly 20The term"political" in this paper, following Xxxxxxxxxx (2011), refers to "the political", the space where the status quo can and is questioned, "an inherently public affair (...) that reconfigures socio-spatial relations" (p.377). In contrast, the term "politics" refers to the process that is shaped by "private interactions between elected governments and elites that overwhelmingly represent business interests" (Xxxxxx, 2004, p.4, as cited by Xxxxxxxxxx, 2011), or as in the case study presented in this paper, represent the interests of powerful elites. through the European Union’s environmental governance legislation on the one hand and the devolution of state power in Spain on the other, which augmented the hydro-social powers of local and regional governments in a context of intensifying inter-regional conflict (Del Moral et al., 2003). These parallel processes help explain the regulatory development of water markets and their role in Spanish hydro-politics.
INSTITUTIONAL REFORM TO DEVELOP WATER MARKETS IN SPAIN. The Spanish hydraulic paradigm has continuously aspired to 'balance' the unequal distribution of water resources between the humid north and the arid southeast, where a productive agriculture has existed for centuries and water scarcity is seen as the limiting factor for agricultural and economic development. Successive hydraulic plans, going as far back as the early twentieth century, have proposed different interbasin transfer alternatives (Xxxxxxxxx-Xxxx et al., 2014). This dominating discourse of public provision of subsidized water has helped in the consolidation of a powerful lobby made up of irrigators, tourism-related developers, and regional governments of the autonomous regions of Murcia and Valencia in southeastern Spain. The Xxxx-Xxxxxx transfer project (ATS or Acueducto Xxxx-Xxxxxx) was the first proposal to be approved in 1971. It was designed to transfer 1000 Mm3 (million cubic meters)—600 in a first phase, and 400 in a second phase that was never realized—, from the Entrepeñas and Xxxxxxx (E&B) reservoirs in the headwaters of the Tajo basin to the southeast (Figure 3.1). The infrastructure would transfer 'surplus' Tajo water, that is, resources in excess of existing needs for urban water supply, irrigation and hydroelectric production. At the time, environmental requirements and impacts were neither legally contemplated nor part of water policy debates. The ATS was presented as the first large hydraulic infrastructure in Spain that did not require significant public subsidies (Xxxxxxxxx, 2000 and 2009). The transfer's specific legislation requires users of transferred waters to pay a volumetric tariff with variable and fixed components. The law allocated transferred water (discounting evaporation losses) to irrigation (up to 400 Mm3) and urban water supply (up to 110 Mm3) in the recipient regions. It also required that a river basin plan determine 'surplus' volumes and that discharges from E&B guarantee a minimum flow of 6 m3/sec in Aranjuez to cover the needs of the Tajo basin (Figure 3.1). Construction started in 1971 and the infrastructure became operational in 1981. Figure 3.1. Spanish river basin districts, existing water markets and the Xxxx-Xxxxxx transfer Source: Own elaboration. Rainfall data from the Spanish Ministry of Agriculture, Food and the Environment. Database available at: xxxx://xxx.xxxxxxx.xxx.xx/ide/metadatos/srv/es/xxxxxxxx.xxxx?uuid=10696290-e0e5-4486-bf1f- e4ad370ce5d5 Transfer volumes are determined by the Central...
