Drought and administrative law: what Catalonia learned from the emergency

On 1 February 2024 the Catalan government declared a drought emergency in the Ter-Llobregat system. Barcelona, its metropolitan area and Girona had to live on 200 litres per person per day. Two years later, the question is no longer whether it rained in time, but whether administrative law was up to the task of managing scarcity.

A historic drought

The 2021–2025 drought was the most severe on record in Catalonia. At the end of January 2024, reserves in the internal river basins stood at 15.8% and the Ter and Llobregat reservoirs at 16.3%. The image that went around the world was that of the church of Sant Romà de Sau, normally submerged, standing in the middle of the mud.

The emergency declaration triggered the restrictions of the Special Drought Plan: a cap of 200 litres per inhabitant per day, cuts of 80% for irrigation and 25% for industrial uses, and bans such as watering gardens or filling swimming pools.

The instrument: sanctioning municipalities

The most interesting part, legally, was not the restrictions on citizens but who was held responsible for complying with them. The Catalan Water Agency (ACA) monitored consumption per municipality. A town hall that exceeded its allocation faced fines that, in serious cases, could reach EUR 150,000.

The design made sense: the municipality runs the network and can act on leaks, municipal irrigation and large consumers. In practice it ran into a material problem. Many small municipalities argued that their overuse came not from waste but from ageing, leaking networks. According to figures cited during the crisis, close to a quarter of drinking water is lost in the pipes. Sanctioning a town hall for the state of a network it cannot renew in a matter of weeks raises an obvious proportionality problem.

Adjusting on the fly

Decree-Law 4/2024 of 16 April (in Spanish) adjusted the system in the middle of the emergency. Overconsumption began to be assessed quarterly rather than monthly. Sanctioned local authorities could request interest-free deferrals of up to twelve months. And water from private desalination plants was exempted from restrictions, under conditions.

Spring rains changed the picture. In early May 2024 the Ter-Llobregat system left the emergency, with reserves above 25%. The allocation rose to 230 litres and irrigation cuts fell to 40%.

The last chapter came in December. The Catalan government approved a decree-law that cancelled the sanctions against municipalities (in Spanish): of 349 proceedings opened, those against 204 municipalities were still pending. The official justification was that they had made a genuine effort to cut consumption. In April 2025, with reservoirs restored, the system moved to pre-alert and restrictions were lifted.

The case for, and the case that does not convince

There are strong reasons in favour of the amnesty. The restrictions broadly worked: consumption fell and Barcelona never faced supply cuts. Collecting fines from municipalities that had reduced consumption, once the emergency was over, would have been hard to justify.

Against it, the institutional message is ambiguous. A sanctions regime that is reformed halfway through and repealed at the end loses its deterrent power for the next drought. If municipalities know fines will eventually be waived, the incentive to invest in the network weakens. My reading is that the problem was not sanctioning as such, but sanctioning the symptom (consumption) without tackling the cause (leaks and the lack of reliable meters).

What it brings to the European debate

The European Water Resilience Strategy, adopted by the Commission on 4 June 2025, sets the aim of improving water efficiency by at least 10% by 2030 and focuses on reducing leaks and digitalising networks. It is a sound diagnosis, but it is a strategy, not legislation: it creates no new obligations and its implementation depends on Member States and, in Spain, also on the regions.

The Catalan case shows where the game is played. Water-saving targets are met or missed in town halls, which own the networks and have the fewest resources. Without funding to renew pipes and without reliable consumption data, any control regime ends up, as in Catalonia, being provisional.

The next drought will come. What will determine how it is managed will not be the severity of the fines, but whether the networks have been renewed and reliable meters installed in the meantime.