Teenagers plogging where there used to be a desert

An antique, light-colored wooden drafting table, tilted, with a half-finished drawing. Behind it, some rolled-up plans. On the wall, photos of the construction of the Seròs Canal, which runs right next to where we are standing, and of the Seròs hydroelectric power plant in various stages of construction. The engineer behind these projects had an office where I am now, on the ground floor of a chalet (he lived with his family on the first floor and in the attic). I'm struck by what used to be called a field telephone, a black one—communications with that phone were made over the power line. And numerous measuring devices: a wattmeter, an ammeter, a voltmeter, an oscilloscope... There's also a safe, two devices to make winter and summer easier—a heater and a fan—a radio, and a candle and oil lamp. And the portrait of Frederick S. Pearson (double: a reproduction of a painting and a photograph).

"This painting was in an apartment they were emptying. 'Don't throw it away!' I said, and brought it to this room," Marc Sans, an art historian with a master's degree in cultural management, tells me (he humbly says he's a museum technician, but I get the impression he's the director). The painting is a detailed depiction of the ship. Mauretania. It has quite a few similarities with the TitanicSurely at first glance, more than one person has been confused. Pearson, the great driving force behind the Camarasa and Sant Antoni dams, built to generate energy, and the Seròs canal, died in a shipwreck. Lusitania, twin of the Mauretania.

In the engineer's office, which is part of the Lleida Water Museum, he has displayed a document that says "Utchesa (sic). Leak record." "We found it in one of the abandoned buildings next to the reservoir," Marc tells me.

I've never been to the Utxesa reservoir. "It's a very beautiful place. And quite unknown, even by the people of Lleida. If you want, we could go," he suggests. And I change the we could by come onBefore that, Marc is interested in me seeing, in the same museum, a short documentary about the construction of the canal and the dams of the Utxesa reservoir. The landscape is desert-like. "Now you'll find it very different," he tells me. In the same room, I'm surprised to see a photograph of a sailing boat navigating the Segre River, in front of the Seu Vella in Lleida. Before, the river's flow fluctuated, and with the spring thaw, it increased significantly.

We take the car and drive through the neighborhood of the Water Museum, located on the left bank of the Segre River. "In the rive gauche"Like in Paris," Marc says with a smile. "It's always called right or left, following the current of the river," he points out. Many tell us that this neighborhood where the museum is located is called Parque del Agua, but this name is from a housing development.

We head down a clearly secondary road toward Torres de Segre, more or less following the Seròs Canal downstream. Along the way, my co-driver tells me a ton of interesting facts about the Seròs Canal. "They drain it every two years, and they find everything," he tells me. "Stolen cars, appliances... and occasionally a corpse also reaches Utxesa: someone who falls in because their dog fell into the water or who jumps in because they're fed up with this world. Montameu, the highest point in the area. I increasingly have the feeling I'm entering an area where cats lose their paws."

On the left, I notice a buttress protecting the Seròs canal—the only place where the canal rises slightly; it runs at ground level—and a mud house.

As we got out of the car in Utxesa and started wandering around, we met a group of kids telling jokes that were both mean and shameless. They then washed their hands at the Utxesa reservoir visitor center, having just finished their trip. plogging...of waste that who knows if they have thrown to their parents (plogging is uman activity that combines running or walking with picking up trash).

"Utxesa is one of the areas of inland Catalonia with the greatest interest for ornithologists, both for the diversity of aquatic, migratory, and sedentary birds, as well as for the uniqueness of some species, especially reed birds," Maria Tost, Nature and Tourism Promotion Officer for the Torres de Segre City Council, tells me. "People come here mainly in spring and autumn; now, very few come in summer," Maria tells me. "Even people from the United States have come looking for the great tit, one of 'our' star species," she adds. Marc emphasizes that "an artificial infrastructure—the canal—has created a natural area of high ecological value." "Furthermore, a wetland area on land with arid sun properties creates unique habitats in this area," Marc remarks when we arrive at the drainage gates.

Environmental organizations in the city of Lleida complain that little water flows through the Segre. But the Seròs hydroelectric plant argues that the canal needs to borrow enough water to maintain the Utxesa area... and keep the plant running!