Our water is not ours

A major paradox in a Mediterranean country like ours is that private companies hold concessions to extract mineral water, which they then bottle, sell, and even export, paying a negligible fee (21 cents per thousand liters bottled). Furthermore, in emergency drought situations, bottling companies face no legal limitations on the amount of water they can extract. This situation is legally sanctioned because water extraction falls under the 1973 Mining Law, a pre-constitutional law that remains in force and treats water as a mineral, thus excluding it from the standard water management system. Fortunately, in Catalonia there are municipalities aware of this absurdity that, while it continues to rain, have approved a motion in their municipal councils to modify the mining law with the aim of ensuring that all inland water bodies, including the aquifers that extract water, are not covered by legal protections – and are instead subject to corresponding river basin management plans. Because they are considered mining operations, these water extractions are legally disconnected from the hydrological cycle, something that directly contradicts the scientific and integrated approach promoted by the Water Framework Directive (2000/60/EC), which integrates all inland waters within a single legal framework.

Let's take it step by step. Where does bottled mineral water come from? Most of it comes from deep aquifers, underground spaces that don't respond immediately to recent rainfall, since water can take decades to filter into the subsoil. These water reserves act like sponges, a kind of natural underground reservoir, but an improved version: they withstand droughts and temperature fluctuations better and don't require maintenance. Thus, our groundwater is a common good of high strategic value. However, its availability and health are not guaranteed. On the one hand, because climate change and human activity compromise its recharge; on the other, because it is still largely unknown.

The Girona region is a good example to understand this anomaly, especially the Montseny massif. Nearly 20% of all bottled water in Catalonia is concentrated there, with the municipalities of Arbúcies, Sant Hilari Sacalm, Viladrau, and Espinelves at its epicenter. The bottling companies—some of them large multinationals—extract water from the same hydrological system that supplies the region, but these extractions are not included in the basin management plans of the Catalan Water Agency (Agència Catalana de l'Aigua). This is a legal anomaly with jurisdictional consequences: this water is not managed from Catalonia, but from the Ministry of Industry, which implies deficient governance of this common resource. On the one hand, a significant portion of the water extracted from the region, which is literally bottled and transported by road, cannot be accounted for. On the other hand, data on extraction volumes, well locations, and borehole results are no longer part of the publicly available and transparent information. This situation inevitably opens up an uncomfortable debate. The region is asking what return it receives if these concessions are not subject to any real fee for the use of a common resource, and is questioning whether data on extraction volumes and the state of underground reserves should not be public. Municipalities asking these questions is a necessary condition for genuine adaptation to climate change. Therefore, we welcome these motions approved in the municipal plenary sessions at the request of local entities such as the Aigua Clara collective of Arbúcies and the Coordinator for the Safeguarding of Montseny, among others. This initiative is an example of how adaptation is not delegated, but rather assumed collectively.

Adapting means making changes. The easiest are technical adjustments—efficiency, optimization, and loss reduction—but these, as the latest IPCC report warns, are not enough. Effective adaptation requires deeper, more structural changes that necessitate opening debates, often uncomfortable ones, on the governance of common resources, and thus adopting a transparent and honest approach to managing uncertainties.