An Incessant Thirst: The Water Market in a Driedup Southern European Country, Spain, 1985–2022

Abstract

[Abstract]: Spain is a hydrologically unbalanced country, in which water policies have historically focused on increasing supply, through the construction of infrastructures to cope with the irregularity of resources, despite being economically and ecologically unsustainable. The medium-term evolution of water management has been conditioned by the change in the political regime, and by the (recent) changes in the culture of water. The aim of the chapter is to analyse the transformations of regulation that have occurred since the rise of democracy in Spain (in particular since the passing of the 1985 Water Act), the map of water uses, the levels and structure of consumption, and the main agents operating in a sector that in recent decades, despite the public nature of the utility, has undergone an increasing privatisation.