“Let the arseholes die of thirst”

The mayor of Agón, Aragón, “sick of extreme nationalism”, on the transfer of water from the Ebro to Barcelona. The underlying point being made by him and others in this, the latest episode in the Iberian Water Wars, is actually fair enough: aware of declining water resources, Barcelona’s “eco-warrior” council planned for unsustainable growth in consumption, and it’s unfair that farmers should pay the price, particularly at a time when the Catalan government is doing its utmost to end the national redestribution of financial resources to poorer communities like Aragón. Where that leaves Barcelona–with the Montjuïc fountains and beach showers turned off, tourists getting sick from the abominable tap water, and locals complaining that they’re getting a much worse deal than the tourists–isn’t clear.

Trevor @ 24 May 2008 11:06 AM

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Comments

1. boynamedsue
   3:26 PM on 25 May 2008

   Cities with better tapwater than Barcelona:

   Liverpool
   Leeds
   Seville
   La Paz
   Tunis
   Tripoli

   Cities with worse tapwater than Barcelona:

   ?

2. Tom
   7:01 PM on 25 May 2008

   Just back from Rome and the tapwater there is better than Font Vella.

   That said, the sparkling mineral water didn’t come close to Vichy Catalan.

3. Trevor ap Simon
   7:06 PM on 25 May 2008

   Vichy Catalan is good, but The Matriarch has stopped going to take the waters at Caldes de Malavella because she says it ain’t as good as it used to be. Probably still good enough for me.

4. Anon
   11:34 AM on 26 May 2008

   I wonder if you saw that the mayor has had a fit of the Adolf Hitlers and blamed the Anglo-Saxons for inventing the crisis in order to favour their own tourist industry. These are presumably not the same Anglo-Saxons who have been filling their supplements for the past 15 years with plagiarised stories about how wonderful Barcelona is. Jordi Hereu probably thinks that the press in other countries is financed by the government as it is in Cataluña. Here’s the story anyway:

   A. Ballbona. Barcelona (El Punt)

   L’alcalde de Barcelona, Jordi Hereu, va denunciar ahir «una ofensiva general dels mitjans anglosaxons» que, a parer seu, han fet una campanya per desprestigiar la ciutat arran de la situació de sequera. En el ressò que s’han fet de la crisi de la sequera, Hereu hi veu una estratègia d’aquests mitjans per «atacar» la ciutat. «És un tema de competència entre ciutats del món, volen atacar un competidor com Barcelona», va indicar. Malgrat dir que hauran d’«avaluar els efectes d’aquestes campanyes», Hereu considera que «la millor contrapropaganda» que es pot fer és mantenir «la normalitat» i assegurar que no hi hagi talls de subministrament d’aigua. «La marca de Barcelona és prou forta», va reblar.

5. boynamedsue
   5:02 PM on 26 May 2008

   As if the “Anglo-saxon press” (Presumably the Peterborough Chronicle or the various Northumbrian Annals) had nowt better to do than exagerate droughts.

   Hereu is off his box.

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