For Mayor Antoni Masana the restrictions are a “necessary measure”, but for many inhabitants of Vacarisses, a suburb a few kilometers north of Barcelona, the swimming pools are just a scapegoat. The hot topic is the waste of water resources in a period of prolonged drought.
Vacarisses is famous in Spain for the number of swimming pools. Those registered are more than 1,500, one for every five residents, against a national average of one for every 37.
In the 1970s, many chose this small town overlooking Montserrat to make the dream of a house with pool and garden where to find relief in the long, hot Spanish summers.
This type of urban development, explains the mayor, is born during the Franco regime and it continued even after leading to the expansion of neighborhoods in which the house model with swimming pool and garden was the rule and where “the water consumption is obviously higher than that of an apartment”.
Now this way of life is threatened by the shortage of water forcing the authorities to resort to increasingly stringent measures, including restrictions on the filling of swimming pools.
Catalonia is one of the regions of the Iberian Peninsula where the drought has hit it hardest, with some water basins at just 7% of capacity.
According to the meteorological agency AEMET, last April was the hottest and driest in Spain since 1961, when monitoring began.
A law expected to go into effect in the next few days will prevent residents from filling swimming pools. The law will not apply to public ones or hotels.
A problem for the inhabitants of Vacarisses who already last year during the summer, one of the hottest ever recorded, endured 16 hour water outages.
The management of water resources in the midst of a drought is becoming a hot political issue in view of the regional and administrative elections at the end of May and the national political vote in the autumn, with farmers and industries competing an increasingly scarce resource.
And while for the mayor the challenge is “adapt this model (the house with swimming pool, ed) to today’s needs” and “make it more sustainable” according to some of his fellow citizens the swimming pools have become a scapegoat for the lack of a coherent water policy in Spain: “The authorities should invest in more desalination and purification plants to integrate aquifers and tanks,” Antonia Leon Garcia, 61, tells Reuters, whose swimming pool has been empty for years also due to high maintenance costs.
His opinion is shared by Gonzalo Delacamara, director of the IE Center for Water and Climate Adaptation in Madrid.
While using water to fill swimming pools during a drought is irresponsible, Delacamara says, most of Spain’s water resources are absorbed by the agricultural sectorwhich accounts for 70% of water use.
