when the Canal d’Urgell construction began under Isabel II, the queen who, as is the Bourbon tradition, he had to go into exile for corruption. The first attempts to make an irrigation canal that would carry water from the Segre to the Urgell plains date back to the 16th century, but it was in the 19th century when, with private Catalan resources, it was built an irrigation canal that would change the economy of Urgell, Pla d’Urgell, Segrià, La Noguera and Les Garrigues. 150 years ago, then, the Catalans were capable of designing and executing a work that would cover 70,000 hectares and whose objective was to prepare the country for the new generations. At that time, Catalonia did not have sovereignty, nor its own institutions, and suffered the persistent grievances of the State, but it had a civil and business muscle that was capable of making the industrial revolutionbuild the Canal d’Urgell and make the railway dream possible.
Today we continue to suffer the same interference and grievances from the State, which persists with respect to Catalan sovereignty in being predatory. But at least, We have institutions and our own government who, despite scarcity, have resources, manage budgets and can plan ambitious projects. That is to say, ‘president’, Government, ‘consellers’, Parliament and regional governments that, in principle, would have to move with the same criteria as civil society in the 19th century: the will to build the Catalonia of the future. Beyond the daily management, we would have to wait for medium and long-term planning, to prepare the country for the upcoming challenges. Nobility forces us to recognize that this was the spirit of the first ‘pujolismo’, the true backbone of projects that went beyond the most immediate present.
Bad management
But this idea of ruler capable of thinking about the following generations has long since disappeared of Catalan political life, turning autonomy into a persistent management of daily misery. Not only do we have rulers worried about the upcoming elections, but we have so many that we are in permanent electoral campaign, and in the black hole of the elections there is no place for long-term projects.
This is exactly what has happened with water management and the resulting tragedy in the Catalan farmlands. At this point, and according to all forecasts, there are 300,000 hectares that are at risk of losing their crops and, even worse, to suffer the death of the fruit trees. In other words, the economy of thousands of families, the way of life of entire regions and the territorial balance of the entire country are at very serious risk. And all this happens because the relevant administrations have not done their homework in recent yearsdespite knowing that we were entering an irreversible phase of climate change, that new infrastructures were needed to prevent droughts (many of them, projected since 2008) and that it was urgent to maintain a plumbing system that loses one out of every four liters of water that passes.
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The mess is absolute: from municipalities that take water from irrigation canals to unexecuted investments, lack of pipe maintenance or the inability to implement wastewater reuse systems. Ester Gomispresident of the Reus hazelnut designation of origin, explained in ‘El Fax de 8tv’ that the problem was not the lack of rain, but poor water management: “We are throwing away the water, while the hazelnut trees are dying& rdquor ;, and he assured that with the reuse of the wastewater from the Molinet de Reus there would be excess water and the entire Camp de Tarragona would be saved. “It is an investment of only 28 million euros & rdquor ;, he added, which continues without projection.
Meanwhile, the Government and the opposition they play the part with sterile meetings that only serve for electoral demagogy. How is it possible that there is not a country table for water? How can it be that there is no national agreement to prioritize the infrastructures that have to save the Catalan countryside? How can they be so useless? It’s not the drought, stupid. It is your mismanagement in the present and your lack of foresight for the future. It has been said: you are not concerned about the next generations, you are only concerned about the next elections.