The Government has carried out the validation in Parliament of the Drought Decree thanks to the abstention of the PSC, JxCat, the CUP, and En Comú Podem. Only the deputies of Esquerra Republicana and the non-attached deputy Antonio Gallego have voted in favor of the decree. The other groups have voted against it.
The Government has managed to ensure that the decree follows its course thanks to the fact that, prior to the start of the plenary session in Parliament, the Government had promised to make changes to the text after the summit on water that will be held with all the parties on the next 31 of March. This willingness to make changes has been expressed once again by the Minister of Climate Action, Teresa Jordà, at the end of her speech presenting the decree.
“If within the framework of the summit, we have to modify the decree, we will modify the decree so that everyone feels comfortable”, Jordà pointed out to ensure the abstention of the socialist group and that of Junts. In addition, all opposition groups have voted in favor of processing the decree as a bill, a circumstance that opens the parliamentary procedure and allows its content to be modified.
Prior to the plenary session, the parliamentary groups had expressed their discomfort at the lack of dialogue and consensus with which the Drought Decree had been drawn up. To appease the spirits and achieve the validation of the text, Teresa Jordà has come to “apologize if we have not spoken enough” during her speech.
In the presentation of the decree, Minister Teresa Jordà has defined the text as “a toolbox” that allows “to make all the resources and all the tools available to the municipalities to ensure supplies.” She has highlighted that the current drought has affected Catalonia for more than two years and that the water reserves are only at 27%.
However, the rest of the groups have attributed the current emergency situation not only to the lack of rain but also criticized the lack of investment and planning in recent years. On behalf of the PSC, deputy Silvia Paneque has assured that it is “a structural problem that was announced by the Catalan Water Agency itself in 2019″. The socialist deputy has accused the Government of “passivity and lack of investment” and has indicated that “in 2022, two out of every three euros that had to be invested in the water had not been executed.”
On behalf of Junts Per Catalunya, Salvador Vergès has also reproached the Government that “the water problem is solved by optimizing its use, and in that, they have done it wrong “. Regarding the decree, Vergès has indicated that “it is more a sanctioning code than a collaboration decree”, and that with the measures it contains only “four liters of water and everyone’s anger emerge”.
The deputy of En Comú Podem, Lucas Ferro Solé has also insisted on the lack of foresight and has asked himself: “What have we done up to here?”, to answer that “years ago there were reports that indicated it”. The deputy of the Commons has concluded that “since the drought of 2005–2008 there is little work to show off” and has lamented because “we have lost many years and the situation could be better.”
The other group that has abstained, the CUP, has insisted through the intervention of Dani Cornellà, that it is necessary to ” stop the macro-projects and the growth of tourism ” in order to have another culture in water consumption.