Like a thirsty shipwrecked man, Spain dries up and turns to the sea to quench its thirst. Nearly two decades after the government, fueled by the tourism boom, embarked on a multimillion-dollar plan to fill the coast with desalination plants to ensure irrigation while feeding millions of people, climate catastrophe is now driving it to scale down its production capacity to increase for drinks due to lack of rain. The central executive is planning a budget of 127.5 million to increase its desalination capacity in south-east Spain by 25%, with expansions of five of the 11 main sea desalination plants it manages between the Valencian Community, Murcia and Andalusia, according to data from the public company Aguas de las Cuencas Mediterranean (Acuamed). Also, the executives of Catalonia and the Balearic Islands, which manage their own plants, plan to increase their capacity before 2027. Catalonia in particular, which plans to double its capacity in five years with an investment of 90 million.
The specter of drought borders Mediterranean Spain under a cloudless sky overlooking the sea. The idea is to fetch the water from the Mediterranean Sea from there that will be lost in the sky. Last February, the Central Executive announced approval to expand the Torrevieja (Alicante) plant, the largest desalination plant in Europe, to up to 120 cubic hectometres per year (currently 80). The government has also approved the expansion of the Murcian Valdelentisco (Cartagena), Águilas (Cartagena) and the Andalusian Carboneras (Almería) and Campo de Dalías (Almería). However, the Secretary of the Irrigation Community of Alhama (Murcia), Alfonso Romero, an area significantly fed by the Valdelentisco desalination plant (which will increase its capacity by 20 hectometers), believes that this is not enough to meet the needs . “The word that defines it is toughness. We need more water to be able to survive,” sums up a farmer who is demanding more resources.
Many of the tourists who bathe in Barcelona’s vast El Prat beach do not know that they are doing so in the same water that later comes out of their hotel’s tap, already made potable. It is extracted through a tube that rises 500 meters above the sand to the sea, from where it is transported to a barrel-filled enclosure of pharaonic proportions sandwiched between Barcelona Airport and merchant ships. At the end of a deafening process, 45 liters out of 100 taken from the sea are fit for human consumption. It is the El Prat Desalination Plant, the great locomotive at the mouth of the Llobregat River that guarantees the supply of water to millions of homes in Barcelona.
Never before had the Catalan plant accumulated such a high production capacity for so many months (eight in total, since January): 140 million liters per day. Government sources admit that without the contribution of the desalination plant, Barcelona would have been on drought alert weeks ago. “What’s in the reservoirs isn’t enough,” says Carlos Miguel, manager of the facility, between 2,000 kW motors that spiral the water to carry out the osmosis process. It was inaugurated in 2009 as the largest desalination plant in Europe. Until 2018, when the capacity of the desalination plant in Torrevieja (Alicante) was expanded to more than 500 kilometers, mainly to supply farmers in south-east Spain in the Valencian Community and Murcia, the vegetable garden of Europe.
Spain is the first country in Europe (and fifth worldwide) with the largest capacity to produce desalinated water: approximately five million cubic meters per day, an amount that could supply water to a population of 34 million inhabitants, according to data provided by the Spanish Association for Desalination and Reuse (AEDyR), which brings together companies in the sector. There are currently 68 sea desalination plants installed in Spain, including the Canary and Balearic Islands, with a capacity ranging from 10,000 to 250,000 cubic meters per day. Despite these numbers, there are areas like Murcia and Catalonia where, according to AEDyR President Domingo Zarzo, there is still a significant deficit and where desalination capacity should be expanded. “Instead of building large plants from scratch, as was done at the beginning of the century, smaller ones must be built for agricultural use or the capacity of plants already in operation must be expanded,” believes Zarzo.
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Between 2004 and 2011, the then socialist government of José Luís Rodríguez Zapatero installed 25 plants on the Mediterranean coast to cover the water deficit. The plan was initially opposed by the environmental industry, which complained about the huge energy costs, the pollution it causes and the years of low activity at some plants. However, specialist Javier Martín Vide, professor of physical geography at the University of Barcelona, believes that over the years it has become evident that its implementation was necessary and that the hydrological future must continue to focus on the production of desalinated water over time , which improves the savings and the quality of the finish. “It’s not just the lack of rain, it’s also what we lose to evaporation from the rise in temperature,” warns the professor.
Prat de Llobregat desalination plant that converts seawater into usable for domestic use. Christopher Castro
The government of Catalonia forecasts that there will be 7% less rain by mid-century, reducing water contributions from its internal basins by 18%. To counteract this, the government is planning its second largest investment since a major drought in 2008 forced restrictions in Barcelona and changed the municipality’s water policy. It will be done with a multi-million dollar investment in five years through the construction of new desalination and reuse plants according to the 2022-2027 hydrological plan. The regional government wants to double its desalination capacity from 80 to 160 hectometers (hm³) per year. The Tordera desalination plant will increase from the current 20 to 80 hm³ and a plant will be built in the Foix Basin. Ecologists in Action denounces the prioritization of desalination before recovering water from the aquifers of Catalonia, where seven out of ten are polluted by agriculture and the meat industry.
The President of the Spanish Tropical Fruits Association, Domingo Medina, reviews one of his tropical fruit orchards, which have been affected by water shortages in the Axarquía region. Daniel Perez (EFE)
Energy consumption represents the highest cost associated with producing desalinated water. “Although the most expensive water, as they say, is that which doesn’t exist,” says the President of AEDyR. However, Zarzo defends that technology has made production more efficient over the years. Remember that the cost of producing a cubic meter reached 20kW more than a decade ago and that it has now been reduced to 3kW, a figure he believes will be very difficult to bring down. “The thermodynamic limit is already very difficult to improve,” he says. “That costs us 48 cents per cubic metre. The billing doesn’t work out for us,” complains farmer Romero.
Groups of people enjoy the sunset in Cala d’Hort, on August 7th in Ibiza. German Lama (Europa Press)
Farmers are self-organizing and in recent years business groups from the provinces of Murcia and Almería are planning to build several of their own desalination plants to reduce their reliance on transfers. Andalusian Agriculture Minister Carmen Crespo asked the state in March to subsidize the desalinated water to the communities.
Water shortages are so severe in some areas that there are communities that rent small portable desalination plants to survive in the summer. And in some cases, they have completely different reasons than agricultural ones. In the Pyrenees corner of the peninsula facing the Mediterranean Sea, in Port de la Selva (Girona), a small municipality on the Costa Brava whose population multiplies in summer due to tourism, a small mobile desalination plant had to be rented in 2018 to guarantee supply. Tourism is also breaking the taps. According to a recent study by the University of the Balearic Islands (UIB), every fourth liter on the islands is consumed by tourists. 70% of Ibiza’s tap water already comes from the sea.
Canary and Balearic Islands, Salt Archipelago
The first desalination plant built in Spain was in Lanzarote in 1964. It was the beginning of the development of desalination in the Canary Islands, which later made the leap to the Balearic Islands and then to the Peninsula.
In the last six years, the production of desalinated water has increased fivefold in Mallorca and by 43.19% in Ibiza. And over the next five, the Balearic government plans to increase its capacity by another five hectometers, explains Joana Garau, Director General of Water Resources. “Given the general water shortage, our strategy is to maximize the water resources coming from the aquifers in order to extend their use until the summer without depleting them,” adds Garau.
On Formentera, the smallest of the inhabited Balearic Islands, purified seawater accounts for up to 80% of total consumption. The small aquifer on the island was enough for the older generations who had devoted themselves to agriculture. According to INE, despite having just over 12,000 inhabitants, it now has a desalination plant with a capacity of 7,000 cubic meters of drinking water per day. Because in summer the paradisiacal island almost triples its population. It is the Spain that drinks water from the sea.
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