The 1,000 kilometre long Tagus river, which starts in northern Spain and flows through Madrid and onwards through Portugal until it reaches the sea at Lisbon, is drying up due to drought, water diversion at source and Madrid’s thirsty population.
The water from the Tagus (Portuguese: Rio Tejo, Spanish: Río Tajo) is used to supply Madrid’s six million residents, supply agriculture through a diversion at source, and to cool nuclear reactors such as at Almaraz near the Portuguese border and the José Cabrera nuclear plant in Almonacid de Zorita.
Miguel Ángel Sánchez, a spokesman for Plataforma en Defensa del Tejo, says that the river is in danger of drying up due to a "combination of climate change, water transfer and polluting waste from Madrid."
The trouble starts in Aragón where a project to siphon water and divert it to Spain’s Segura river, to irrigate farms and golf courses in Spain’s dry southeast, came on tap in 1979, reducing the flow through Portugal.
The volume of water available was badly miscalculated and Spain’s cyclical droughts were left out of the calculations so that today, only 47% of the required water flows into the two headwater dams which currently are at 11% capacity, far too low to allow any transfers to the Segura, but ensuring the water reaching Portugal is at an historic low.
Spain is moaning about Spanish agricultural needs not being met but Portugal has long complained, to no avail, that the Spanish are taking water from the Tagus at source and blocking its progress via dozens of dams built on the river’s Spanish side.
Madrid has passed self-interested water use laws that ignore the European water directive. An EU delegation visited the Tagus river last year and issued a highly critical report of Spain’s failure to conform. This report has been ignored.
Paulo Constantino, a spokesman for the ProTEJO movement, says that the Spanish authorities only "send water when it is necessary to produce hydroelectric power. The water is retained and even if there is water, it is not sent."
"If there is a year of drought, it is obvious that in those years it is more difficult to provide higher flows, but what we see is that, whether or not there are years of drought, the flows remain low," explains Constantino.
After around 65% of the Tagus’s available water has been diverted for Spanish agriculture, much of the remained goes to wash and hydrate Madrid’s population. Six million Spaniards flushing their toilets created a tsunami of filth which, inadequately treated, rejoins the Tagus lower down as it heads towards Portugal.
At least this flow will help cool the Almaraz nuclear power plant’s (pictured) two pressurized light water reactors, situated 100 kilometres from the Portuguese border. Should the flow of the river reduce to the point where the Almaraz cooling water supply pond is affected, Spain’s nuclear power industry’s self-proclaimed 'safety excellence' will be put to the test.
Spain’s water management has been driven by economics, not environmental considerations, says environmental lawyer María Soledad Gallego, when interviewed by the Guardian, “A river isn’t just a water resource, it has a cultural, social, historic and aesthetic value,” as it does for Portugal.
Spain already has shown that it considers the Tagus to be its own property and pays scant regard to what happens downstream when the river becomes Portuguese.
The diversion of huge volumes of water to irrigate Spanish agricultural land and to a lesser extent, its golf courses, is based on a decision made by the Spanish in the first years of the 20th century, coming on stream in the late 70s.
The EU’s directives are simply ignored and when Portugal complained that the expansion of the Almaraz nuclear plant was a potential danger to the river and the nearby Portuguese population, this was quashed by Jean-Claude Drunker and the complaint had to be withdrawn by the Portuguese government.
Spain will continue to divert the river at source, prioritising water-hungry agriculture, leaving her Portuguese neighbours to complain of low flow rates and consequently higher pollution readings.
