Lucas Jiménez, president of the Irrigation Union: "Page has beaten Puig"

Yesterday Lucas Jiménez led the protest in front of the Moncloa Palace of the Levante irrigators while the Council of Ministers approved the cut in the Tajo-Segura transfer,...

Tagus-Segura The Government approves the cut in the transfer and Ximo Puig warns: "We will continue to claim"
Transfer Murcia denounces the cut before the Supreme Court: "We are not going to tolerate it"

Lucas Jiménez

yesterday led the protest in front of the Moncloa Palace of the irrigators of Levante while the Council of Ministers approved the cut in the

Tajo-Segura transfer

, which he describes as "gross" for endangering 28,000 hectares of irrigated land and 15,000 jobs.

Once the Tagus Plan has been approved, is there only one judicial route left to save the transfer? We are going to prepare a contentious-administrative appeal so that precautionary measures are applied to this decision.

We believe that the application of the Plan del Tajo can be paralyzed in the first step of the cut and, although the process may be long, the biggest cuts will arrive in 2026. We believe that there is a party because the minister has skipped all the technical proposals to the bullfighter .

She has made such an authoritarian and political performance of this that she has left loopholes that we are going to try to take advantage of so that the Supreme Court has Justice.

In parallel, now is the time for general assemblies in the more than 80 affected municipalities so that society understands what this grotesque decision by the Government implies.

The minister assures that the cuts that will arrive will be supplied with 140 cubic hectometres of desalinated water... That is false, I don't know if it was a dream of the minister.

One only has to read the Segura Basin Plan, which says that in 2021, with all possible desalination, there was a deficit of 91 cubic hectometres despite the use of 87% of the desalination capacity.

The route that remains is the promise of reaching 100%, which means 38 more hectares for irrigation.

The Segura Hydrographic Confederation (CHS) recognizes that if the transfer is cut, something that it describes as "unaffordable" for the basin, in 2027 we would reach a deficit of 390 hectometres, which the minister intends to solve with 38 promises.

I insist that this figure of 140 cubic hectometres of desalinated water is a dream of the minister,

because it cannot generate new water above what the civil works of the desalination plants give of itself, which is, according to the CHS, 38. Have you felt politically alone from the left? I would not say that.

The people of our regions have been betting, but it must be understood that the minister has turned her back on her technicians, her fellow party members in these regions, and the National Water Council.

Even from the Council of State, which she reprimands him for the botch job.

What can you do when a vice president of the executive branch is blind to ending the transfer?

It is very difficult. Have you missed more forcefulness from socialist leaders like Puig? If there had been positions as radical as that of García-Page, perhaps the result would have been different.

Page's bet before the National Water Council stupefied the PSOE but it paid off.

I would have liked a bet as firm as that of García-Page of the PSOE in Murcia and Valencia.

The minister said that she denied the water war and has caused another inmate in the PSOE

Has García-Page won the game against Ximo Puig? Without a doubt he has won.

But it's a solitaire game.

He will give you votes in the elections but nothing else.

This does not benefit the Castilian-La Mancha and the riverside towns at all.

Until now, the minister with her decisions had withdrawn up to 140 cubic hectometres that did not come out of the Entrepeñas and Buendía swamps, and that is over.

Now those towns are going to see 105 hectometres run downstream because ecological flows are mandatory for all uses.

Someone will do the math and they will see that they don't come out. Can the regional and general elections rescue the transfer? Of course.

Hydrological planning can be modified.

But, given the emotional and political distance that there is from Madrid to the towns of the Levant, I find it very difficult for any future ruler to do so.

Nobody has positioned itself to this day saying that this will be reversed.

We will be attentive. The PP in Murcia and the Valencian Community have actively positioned themselves against... It is true.

But this is not played in a regional context but a national one.

The same thing can happen again, because it has happened historically.

We advocate a great national agreement so that irrigators have peace of mind and do not appear to be stealing water, when it is just the opposite.

That tranquility is achieved with national agreements, leaving regionalisms aside and defining as a country what type of agriculture you want, where and how.