The president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, announced this Monday that the regional Executive has sued the Government of the nation before the Supreme Court for the design of the Tagus hydrological plan. As EL PAÍS reported in March, the regional Administration considers that the decree that regulates the use of water from that basin is designed against the interests of Madrid, which is why it has been preparing this judicial offensive for six months. In this way, the Community of Madrid joins the water war, a situation in which the regions of Castilla-La Mancha – where the water is collected -, Andalusia, the Valencian Community and Murcia – where it is collected, have been engaged for years. receives, and that they have also announced their appeal to the Supreme Court.
“Sanchez’s obsession with Madrid has no limits,” said Díaz Ayuso during an intervention this Monday, in which he did not accept questions from journalists. “Now he wants this region to surrender due to thirst,” he accused. “He has approved a royal decree that puts the water supply of almost seven million at risk.” [de personas]”, has added. “He has designed a hydrographic plan for the Tagus to besiege Madrid, which does not bow down to his abuses,” he continued.
“The new hydrological plan changes the rules and boycotts Madrid’s water supply system, which is the largest in Spain, and one of the best in the world,” he continued. And he concluded: “There is nothing worse than trying to ration water to seven million people. When you think that Sánchez has already given his worst, he always surprises us with a new one.”
The core of the conflict is in the Valmayor reservoir which, with a capacity of 124.4 cubic hectometers of water, is the second most important in the Community of Madrid. 1.7 million Madrid residents depend on it for drinking, 25% of the population, according to the regional government. And the new regulation requires prior authorization from the State that the reservoir can receive water from the Alberche River, through the San Juan-Valmayor transfer.
The Ayuso Government anticipates that the legal battle could last four years, according to the 35,000 euro contract it put out to tender to find a firm to defend it in court. This agreement, which can be consulted on the regional contracting portal, describes in detail the points of conflict between the two administrations.
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Thus, the Canal de Isabel II understands that its interests are affected with regard to “maintenance of the principle of supremacy of the use of water to supply populations at all times and especially in situations of drought or scarcity”; the “establishment of a prior authorization to carry out a transfer between reservoirs of different exploitation systems of the Demarcation”; “of a regime of ecological flows in bodies of water”; the “impossibility of establishing ecological flows to the Las Nieves and Pozo de los Ramos weir due to lack of regulation capacity”; or the “absence of justification of the established generating flows”; the “lack of definition of the quality parameters and conditions of the ecological flows that are defined.”
The incorporation of Madrid into the water war deepens the institutional clash between the regional and national governments. Since Díaz Ayuso came to power for the first time, in August 2019, the Madrid Executive has gone to court against 12 State decisions of all kinds: from the management of the pandemic, to educational curricula, to fiscal policy. .
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