The cut inflicted by the Government on the transfer to Segura represents a significant political defeat for Ximo Puig and a blow to the electoral options of the PSOE in Levante, just four months before the municipal and regional elections.
The Council of Ministers approved last Tuesday the Tagus hydrological plan, which plans to increase its ecological flows and bet on desalination as an alternative.
In practice, it is an unprecedented hack to the aqueduct and a reduction of about 40%
of the water that is derived to Levante
.
Aware of the social, economic and electoral weight of water, the president of the Valencian Community, as we revealed today, pressured Teresa Ribera, Minister of Ecological Transition, to gradually apply the cut to transfer.
The fact that this is now hiding behind technical criteria does not obscure the fact that we are facing a political battle in which environmental orthodoxy has prevailed against the pragmatism required by an issue as delicate as water management.
To justify its decision, the Executive relies on the five sentences of the Supreme Court that require raising the flow of the Tagus.
But to this we must add the ability to
Emiliano García-Page, the great beneficiary of the result of this contest
.
"Don't worry, it will come out in the terms that we have discussed", was the guarantee that Ribera, on the eve of giving the green light to the modification of the Tagus basin plan, offered the president of Castilla-La Mancha, who before he had come to threaten to toughen the battle in court.
Both are aware, and this is reflected in the contacts between the two, that this decision is a blow to the Valencian president
.
Puig appealed to the Council of State for the unilateral modification of the Tagus plan after the vote in the National Water Council.
The Valencian president, who reasonably asked to take into account a prior analysis of the state of the waters before determining fixed flows, went so far as to accuse the Ecological Transition of violating "institutional loyalty."
The measure approved by the Government of Pedro Sánchez means liquidating the bases of an infrastructure that has turned the southeast of Spain into an export power.
The pressure exerted by Puig has been sterile -he has barely obtained a vague investment commitment-, which from the electoral point of view can be devastating for the Valencian PSOE
, especially in Alicante, the great stronghold of Carlos Mazón's PP.
The cut in the transfer undermines Puig's options for re-election and triggers those of Fernando López Miras in Murcia, whose government is preparing a judicial offensive in coordination with Andalusia.
The Government's decision to reopen the water war, in addition to shaking up the political scene, will inflict a
severe economic damage
to the Levantine fruit and vegetable industry.
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