With all the enormous problems facing the planet, and here in Catalonia a suffocating heat wave with the first fires having been recorded, one might think that the difficulties faced in the town of l'Albi and some thirty municipalities in the Segrià and Les Garrigues counties of Lleida, which have been without drinking water in their homes for more than two weeks, are not worthy of my editorial today. But from Barcelona or any of the large cities, it is hard to understand the problem confronted by these thousands of families, because, due to the consequences it has, most people don't have to deal with such a thing. The difficulties of the "emptied" Catalonia have never become a major problem for those who govern, since, in general, they only go there from time to time to sign the town hall's book of honour, declare open a Festa Major, or ask for votes in election campaigns.
Those of us of a certain age who came from a village background, in my case, from La Seu d'Urgell, vaguely remember in the 60s and 70s going to local springs to fetch water in the middle of summer, or, in smaller municipalities, the arrival of tanker trucks to alleviate the ravages of drought. But that was many, many years ago and is part of that black and white era when even water was a precious commodity in the summer. Thus, when I saw the news of the villages of Les Garriges and Segrià being left without drinking water in their homes for two weeks, unable to use tap water for cooking due to the effect of agricultural practices and the application of pesticides, I thought that in some aspects we have not made much progress.
The internet has arrived. All TV streaming platforms can be watched. But there is no drinking water. The Catalan Water Agency (ACA) limits itself to subsidizing water trucks that stop in each village for half an hour a week. What if you can't go there at that time? You run out. What if you're afraid to leave your home when the outdoor temperature is above 40 degrees? You run out. What if you can't fill the bottle because your age doesn't allow it? You run out. What if you are working in the field or out of town? You run out. Of course there is the alternative of going shopping but sometimes we are not aware of the difficulties of the people in the countryside and we think it is as easy or as normal as in the capital to go to a supermarket.
A total of sixteen local mayors and the county council have expressed their disgust to the ACA over a problem that has gone on for many years and that will only be solved by building a water treatment plant at Albagés, a project that has been frozen for fifteen years. Back in the 60s and 70s, there was no ACA and the problem was the same - apart, perhaps, from grand speeches about farming, zero kilometre products and the need to stop the empying out of small towns to safeguard the territory - that people's basic needs have to be met. Surely the residents of the affected municipalities will be more satisfied than with the excuses they receive each year. Because the country is a unified whole, there is not just the part in which there is always congestion and pollution, as well as hundreds of thousands of votes. There is the abandoned Catalonia, the one that suffers without being heard and which, when all is said and done, only appears in the media through news stories like this.