Among the many consequences of a thermometer that has shot upwards during the months of June and July and a persistent drought, in a year that has had almost no spring, which has only broken in the last few days with some rain in the Pyrenees, is a drastic reduction in water reserves in the interior basins of Catalonia. The latest data to be released places the reserves of the nine reservoirs in the interior catchment areas at 41% of their capacity. It is a percentage that has fallen several more points since the alarm was first raised; you only need to go back to July 18th, when the level was 47%, a percentage which already caused some comparative alarm, because it had not been reached since the first months of 2018.
We are, therefore, just a percentage point away from the Catalan Water Agency (ACA) starting to apply restrictions. At the same time, the ACA has pressed the button to increase fresh water production at the desalination plants, which have been operating at 90% capacity since Monday. If, on the one hand, there are these worrying measures from September onwards, unless there is significantly more rain than there has been so far, they will end up being noticed sooner than later in many areas of the country. Meanwhile, the measures that have already been put in place are the energy saving measures implemented by the Spanish government and which, in addition to shop window lighting being switched off, limit the use of air conditioning to 27 degrees in summer in public buildings, commercial spaces and department stores, transport infrastructure, cultural spaces and hotels.
Of Pedro Sánchez's first measures, the information coming in tells us that there has been a fairly widespread switch-off of shop windows and a more uneven application with regard to air conditioning. This second point will be a real battle outside public buildings, where control is stricter. In any case, the Spanish government already knows that control will be impossible and, thus, puts itself in the hands of individual responsibility in many cases. With the dilemma of having to choose between offering the customer a certain level of comfort or complying with the most draconian regulations that have been implemented in Europe so far, and amidst a summer which is often extremely hot.
Over the coming months, we will have to accustom ourselves to hearing news stories that range from the evolution of Catalonia's reservoirs and their capacity, and the implementation of energy saving measures. Good times are not coming for the economy either and, somehow, the holiday period is not turning out to be as buoyant as expected in many areas of Catalonia. We will see when the data comes out at the end of the month. The number of subjects worrying the public is expanding and is moving beyond the finite shortlist of concerns of recent years. With this, the level of demands on those who govern also increases, and they are going to have to respond on more tangible issues than ever. You only need to look at the level of anger with many of the ridiculous actions we have put up with over recent years with Franciscan patience.