Drought forces Spain to invest more than 300 million in desalination plants

Like a thirsty castaway, Spain dries up and turns to the sea to quench its thirst.

Almost two decades after the Government, pushed by the tourism boom, undertook a multimillion-dollar plan to fill the coast with desalination plants with which to guarantee irrigation while supplying millions of people, the climate emergency is now pushing it to increase its drinking production capacity due to the lack of rain.

The central Executive projects a budget of 127.5 million to increase its desalination capacity by 25% in the southeast of Spain, with expansions of five of the 11 main sea desalination plants that they manage between the Valencian Community, Murcia and Andalusia, according to data of the public company Aguas de las Cuencas Mediterraneas (Acuamed).

The Executives of Catalonia and the Balearic Islands, which manage their own plants,

The ghost of drought borders Mediterranean Spain and it does so under a sky empty of clouds and facing the sea.

The idea is to get from there, from the Mediterranean, the water that will be lost in the sky.

Last February, the central Executive announced the authorization to expand the installation in Torrevieja (Alicante), the largest desalination plant in Europe, up to 120 cubic hectometres per year (currently it has 80).

The Government has also approved expanding the Murcian Valdelentisco (Cartagena), Águilas (Cartagena) and the Andalusian Carboneras (Almería) and Campo de Dalías (Almería).

The secretary of the irrigation community of Alhama (Murcia), Alfonso Romero, an area that is significantly nourished by the Valdelentisco desalination plant (which will expand its capacity by 20 hectometers), believes, however, that it is not enough to meet the needs.

“The word that defines it is hardship.

We need more water to be able to survive”, summarizes a farmer, who asks for more resources.

Many of the tourists who bathe in the extensive Barcelona beach of El Prat do not know that they do so in the same water that later, already made drinkable, will come out of the tap of their hotel.

It is extracted by a tube that rises above the sand 500 meters out to sea, from where it is transported to an enclosure of pharaonic dimensions full of drums and sandwiched between the Barcelona airport and merchant ships.

At the end of a deafening process, for every 100 liters extracted from the sea, 45 will be suitable for human consumption.

It is the El Prat desalination plant, the great locomotive at the mouth of the Llobregat River that guarantees supply to millions of homes in Barcelona.

The Catalan plant had never accumulated so many months (a total of eight, since January) at such a high production capacity: 140 million liters per day.

Sources from the Government admit that without the contribution of the desalination plant, Barcelona would have already entered a drought alert weeks ago.

"What is in the reservoirs is not enough," says Carlos Miguel, plant manager, between 2,000 kW motors that rotate the water in a spiral to carry out the osmosis process.

It was inaugurated in 2009 as the largest desalination plant in Europe.

Until 2018, when the capacity of the desalination plant in Torrevieja (Alicante) was expanded to more than 500 kilometers, designed to supply mainly farmers in the southeast of Spain in the Valencian Community and Murcia, the vegetable garden of Europe.

Spain is the first country in Europe (and the fifth in the world) with the greatest capacity to generate desalinated water: approximately five million cubic meters per day, an amount that could potentially supply water to a population of 34 million inhabitants , according to data from the Spanish Association of Desalination and Reuse (AEDyR), which brings together companies in the sector.

There are currently 68 sea desalination plants installed in Spain, including the Canary and Balearic Islands, with a capacity of between 10,000 and 250,000 cubic meters per day.

Despite these figures, there are territories, such as Murcia and Catalonia, where, in the opinion of Domingo Zarzo, president of AEDyR, there is still a significant deficit and where desalination capacity should be expanded.

“Rather than rebuilding large plants, as was done at the beginning of the century,

Between 2004 and 2011, the then socialist government of José Luís Rodríguez Zapatero installed 25 plants on the Mediterranean coast to supply the water deficit.

The plan was initially opposed by the environmental sector, which complained about the enormous energy cost, its associated pollution and the low level of activity that some installations registered for years.

However, the specialist Javier Martín Vide, professor of Physical Geography at the University of Barcelona, ​​believes that over the years it has been shown that its implementation was necessary and that the hydrological future must continue to focus on producing desalinated water at the same time which improves the savings and the quality of the surface.

“It is not only the lack of rain, it is also what we lose through evaporation due to the increase in temperatures,”

Prat de Llobregat desalination plant, which converts seawater into usable for domestic uses.

Christopher Castro

The Government of Catalonia forecasts that by the middle of the century it will rain 7% less, so the water contributions from its internal basins will be reduced by 18%.

To deal with it, the Government plans its second largest investment since a major drought in 2008 forced restrictions to be implemented in Barcelona and changed the community's water policy.

It will be made with a millionaire investment in five years through the construction of new desalination and reuse plants, according to its 2022-2027 hydrological plan.

The regional Executive wants to double its desalination capacity to go from 80 to 160 hectometers (hm³) per year.

The Tordera desalination plant will go from the current 20 to 80 hm³ and a plant will be built in the Foix basin.

The president of the Spanish Association of Tropical Fruits, Domingo Medina, reviews one of his tropical fruit plantations affected by the lack of water in the Axarquia area.

Daniel Perez (EFE)

Energy expenditure represents the highest cost associated with the production of desalinated water.

"Although the most expensive water, as they say, is that which does not exist", says the president of AEDyR.

Zarzo defends, however, that over the years technology has made production more efficient.

He recalls that more than a decade ago the cost to produce a cubic meter reached 20 kW, and that now it has been reduced to 3 kW, a figure that he believes will be very difficult to lower.

“The thermodynamic limit is already very difficult to improve on,” he says.

“It costs us 48 cents per cubic meter.

The accounts don't work out for us”, complains, however, farmer Romero.

Groups of people enjoy the sunset in Cala d'Hort, on August 7 in Ibiza.Germán Lama (Europa Press)

Farmers organize themselves and in recent years business groups from the provinces of Murcia and Almería plan to design several of their own desalination plants to reduce their dependence on transfers.

The Andalusian Minister of Agriculture, Carmen Crespo, asked the State in March to subsidize the desalinated water to the municipalities.

The situation of water stress is so serious in some areas that there are municipalities that hire small portable desalination plants with which to survive in summer.

And in some cases, they are for very different reasons than agricultural ones.

In the Pyrenean corner of the Peninsula facing the Mediterranean, in Port de la Selva (Girona), a small municipality on the Costa Brava whose population multiplies in summer due to tourism, was forced in 2018 to hire a small mobile desalination plant with the to guarantee supply.

Tourism also collapses the taps.

According to a recent study by the University of the Balearic Islands (UIB), one in every four liters on the islands is consumed by tourists.

70% of Ibiza's tap water already comes from the sea.

Canary and Balearic Islands, salt archipelagos

The first desalination plant built in Spain was in Lanzarote in 1964. It was the beginning of the development of desalination in the Canary Islands, which later made the leap to the Balearic Islands and then to the Peninsula.

In the last six years, the production of desalinated water in Mallorca has increased fivefold and in Ibiza it has increased by 43.19%.

And in the next five, the Government of the Balearic Islands wants to increase its capacity by another five hectometres, explains Joana Garau, general director of Water Resources.

"Given the general lack of water, our strategy is to stretch the water resources, which come from the aquifers, to the maximum, in order to extend their use until summer without emptying them," adds Garau. 

In Formentera, the smallest of the inhabited Balearic Islands, purified seawater accounts for up to 80% of the total used.

For the older generations, who were dedicated to agriculture, the small aquifer on the island was enough for them.

Today, despite having just over 12,000 inhabitants, according to INE data, it has a desalination plant with a capacity to generate 7,000 cubic meters of drinking water per day.

This is so because in summer the paradisiacal island sees its population almost triple.

It is the Spain that drinks water from the sea. 

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