In Spain, the vegetable garden of Europe at the heart of a water war

With repeated droughts and enormous crop needs, the situation is about to change in this quasi-desert region where nearly half of the fruit and vegetables exported by Spain, the Union's leading horticultural power, are produced. European. To fight against the effects of global warming and the desertification which threatens 75% of the country, the government of Pedro Sanchez decided in February to limit the massive transfers of water carried out from the Tagus to the agricultural lands of the Spanish Levant. Because at the same time, in the center of the country, the longest river in the Iberian Peninsula has seen its flow drop dangerously - to the point that in places, in summer, it is possible to cross on foot its bed transformed into a band of cracked earth. As with the Nile in Egypt or the Tigris in Iraq, the water of the Tagus, which flows over a thousand kilometers in central Spain to empty into the Atlantic Ocean in Portugal, has become a source of tensions. A conflict ...