If you look at them on site They are nothing more than small walls that, many times, barely protrude from the surface. The water even passes them effortlessly when there is some flow. They hardly retain any volume and do not stop any flooding. The majority are old weirs no longer in use, some gauging station or a small course diversion to bring water to a farm.
That is basically what is being removed from the rivers of the Valencian Community and the rest of the hydrographic districts in Spain. And a look at the images explains the dimension of what is removed.
The truth is that what is being removed from the European, Spanish and Valencian Community rivers constitute old obstacles and barriers in the river course that have become old and obsolete. “Normally of low height, built to allow the diversion or elevation of surface waters for different human uses,” as described by the Ministry of Ecological Transition.
However, Vox does not stop insisting on its hydraulic hoax: the far-right spokesperson in Congress, Pepa Millán, repeated this Wednesday on behalf of DANA that “what kills is having collapsed the dams out of pure climate fanaticism.” Its boss, Santiago Abascal, already stated on October 30 that part of the blame for the deaths lay with the European Commission for a “criminal law on blowing up dams.”
The Minister of Territorial Policy, Ángel Luis Torres, recalled in Congress that “no dam has been destroyed in the Valencian Community in 24 years.”
The Júcar Hydrographic Confederation itself explained in May 2023 regarding the elimination of weirs that “these old disused infrastructures are not useful for storing water, since they are usually clogged and only maintain a small sheet of stagnant water upstream.”
The Vox hoax was first born to accuse the Government of being responsible for the water shortage during the drought because it had removed reservoirs that stored water. A hydromyth which ignores that if there is no precipitation, any reservoir is incapable of storing liquid, since it does not rain water to reservoir. “If a weir is in disuse, it should be demolished to avoid problems and recover the longitudinal continuity of the river and its character as an ecological corridor,” added the CHJ a year and a half ago.
In Spain there are tens of thousands of these infrastructures already forgotten throughout the territory. More than 19,000 have been inventoried, but the same ministry admits that “in reality there are many more that do not appear in inventories or official records.”
These works are being undertaken in all demarcations and repeat the same pattern: weirs and walls that were accumulating in the rivers and courses whether in the basin of the Miño, the Sil, the Ebro, the Tajo, the Duero, the Guadalquivir or the Cantabrian river network.
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