Catalonia’s Worst Drought in History Has Triggered a State of Emergency

As Catalan government officials work to fight this drought, they’ve made ample moves to try to store some of their dwindling water reserves. They’ve also warned that this drought could be difficult in the coming months and years.

Pere Aragonès, the Catalan president, explained that some areas of Catalonia have not seen rain in three years — or more than 1,000 days. The drought has become prolonged, and now the government is working to try to deal with this worrisome state of emergency.

As a result of the drought, the water reserves that are made up of the two biggest rivers in Catalonia have fallen to 16%. This fall quickly resulted in the government announcing a state of emergency, with the president explaining how difficult this drought has made things.

Many water restrictions had already been put in place throughout the Catalonia region, as the drought has been ongoing for three years. However, these recent restrictions will now be extended to all of Barcelona.

Therefore, if nothing improves, Barcelona citizens will have their water restricted to 47.5 gallons of water a day per person. If the government still cannot get ahead of this water drought, or replenish their water reserves, then the restrictions will be tightened even more.

Unfortunately, this was not to be, as the reserves are now at 16% capacity — down more than 50% since 2022.

Now, Catalonia hasn’t had much of a break in any way as the government struggles to adapt to this ongoing drought.

“We are entering a new climate reality,” Aragonès said. “It is more than likely we will see more droughts that will be both more intense and more frequent.”

As temperatures rise there is a greater amount of evaporation that goes on. Because of drier conditions, the soil and plants will also dry out. This means even when it does rain again less of the water is sticking around.

The World Health Organization estimates that nearly 55 million people are affected by the consequences of droughts every year. 40% of the population on the planet goes through water scarcity and a staggering 800 million people are predicted to be at risk of being displaced by droughts by the year 2030.

Approximately 80 to 90% of natural disasters documented in the past 10 years have been the results of floods, droughts, heat waves, storms, or tropical cyclones.

“A significant portion of the world’s agricultural lands was still suffering from low soil moisture and groundwater levels, and satellite observations showed stressed vegetation on all continents. The GEOGLAM Crop Monitor indicated that agriculture was most threatened in parts of Central and South Americas, Africa, Europe, and southern Asia” the report said.

As areas of the world become drier, it becomes increasingly difficult for the soil to retain water. The quality of the soil starts to deteriorate and loses the essential minerals and elements needed to sustain a healthy growing season.

The city of Chicago reported issues with grain and forage quality in pastures. This resulted in ranchers being increasingly unable to raise livestock and produce animal products.

While plenty of water is being taken away because of evaporation, more is being added to the oceans because of melting glacier ice. All these tons of ice added to the ocean causes it to rapidly expand. NASA reports that sea level variations in the modern day are at unprecedented levels not seen for over 2,500 years.

Flash floods cause major damage and coastal storms are rolling in constantly. Because of these tendencies, coastal zones are some of the highest-risk areas in the world for people to live in.

Back in early 2023, the BBC published a report emphasizing how this drought in Catalonia is the worst in decades and climate change was to blame. At the time, the water level had dropped below 10% of capacity while officials worried about contamination by silt.

“We are trying to transfer the water as quickly as we can because the quality right now in the winter was good [but] in the spring it will become really, really bad, and we’re trying to extract all the fish we can find there,” he said.

“I’ve never seen it so empty. “It’s sad when you’ve seen [the reservoir] full before. But that’s the way it is. It’s climate change and anyone who says it doesn’t exist, I don’t know what you can say to them,” Torrent said.

The government is recognizing that it lives in a new climate reality and that the whole system needs to change so something like this doesn’t happen again. Officials set an ambitious goal to end this dependency by 2030, but such a timeline seems optimistic.

However, desalination plants do have drawbacks, as they use a lot of energy. These plants are also linked to the heating up of the planet — one of the main reasons experts say this drought continues.

With more of these desalination plants, more water will be able to spread throughout the region. This can greatly help in times of drought.

Therefore, there isn’t a lot of instant aid to help the region. However, the Spanish government did recently announce that they would ship around 10.5 million gallons of water to Catalonia from a desalination plant in Valencia.

Some tourism features — such as a free fountain water show — are now shut down. Farmers cannot water their crops as they need to. Barcelona is already worried about how they will deal with an influx of tourists during the traveling summer months. As the drought continues, many may struggle in all aspects of their lives.