Gerard Melgar Barcelona

Barcelona

Updated Sunday, April 7, 2024-14:23

  • Government The Generalitat declares phase 2 of emergency due to drought in 12 municipalities in the province of Girona

  • Foment del Treball employers demand to bring water from the Ebro to Barcelona due to the drought and that the Government allow hotels to fill their pools

The solutions to alleviate the effects of the drought in Catalonia, one of the central issues of the next

12-M election

campaign , continue to divide the parties.

The president of the

Catalan PP

and head of the list for the regional elections in May,

Alejandro Fernández

, took advantage of an event this morning in L'Hospitalet de Llobregat (Barcelona) to establish a position on this matter. The

popular

leader

has said that both the president of the

Generalitat

,

Pere Aragonès

, and the president of the

Government

,

Pedro Sánchez

, should have resigned for "not having guaranteed" the water supply in areas such as

Barcelona and its metropolitan area

.

"If they are not capable of guaranteeing that you open the tap and water can come out anywhere in Catalonia and the rest of Spain, they are failed governments that should have resigned a long time before," he said.

Fernández has described as "grotesque" the image of the transfer of water in ships from the Sagunto desalination plant (Valencia) to the port of Barcelona, ​​an emergency plan agreed upon by both Executives last February and that could be activated at the beginning of next summer if the water scarcity situation does not improve.

For the PP candidate in the Catalan elections, the only viable solution is "the interconnection of Barcelona with the Ebro River." "We are going to get rid of prejudices and nonsense and we will follow the rabbits of those who know," he expressed in reference to the proposal of a working group formed by the professional associations of civil engineers, industrial engineers, agronomists and economists.

The transfer proposed at the end of 2023 by this collegiate consortium has been by both the Generalitat and the Government, which are committed to the expansion of the Tordera desalination plant, in Blanes (Girona), and the construction of a new plant in the vicinity of the Foix River basin, in the province of Barcelona.

"Desalination plants and water reuse policies are necessary but insufficient," Fernández warned about the Government's strategy, which he described as "dissimulating and moving forward." For this reason, Fernández has stressed that "it is essential" to undertake the interconnection infrastructure with the Ebro River "to make specific extractions in cases of crisis."

"These interconnection works are what allow Tarragona, its metropolitan area and the Costa Dorada to have guaranteed water because they did their homework in the 80s and 90s, while in Barcelona this was not the case," he added regarding the supply of water. water from a part of the province of Tarragona through the mini-transfer that connects the Catalan basins dependent on the Ebro Hydrographic Confederation (attached to the Ministry for the Ecological Transition) with the internal basins (controlled by the Catalan Water Agency of the Generalitat).