Urbanizing the water supply of Barcelona and Madrid through the 20th and 21st centuriesFrom the local to the global

Hug March, PhD, Geography Department, UAB

David Saurí, Prof., Geography Department, UAB

International conference on Environmental Conflicts and Justice, Barcelona, July 2010

THE MULTIPLE MEANINGS OF WATER

Water as life, human right,

commons

Water as a sacred and

cultural flow

Water as power and control

Water as 2 Hidrogens and 1

Oxigen

“Aguas de Barcelona: Una apuesta por el petróleo del siglo XXI” [Aguas de Barcelona:

a good bet for the oil of the 21st century] (Expansión (economic journal) 2009)

“The environment is no longer a simple concern of proactive governments. It has become a global economic issue”, Suez

Environment (http://www.suez-environnement.com/en/profile/about-

us/challenges/challenges/)

Water as a commodity, money,

economic power

“El Canal de Isabel II retoma su plan para sacar a bolsa el 49% del capital” [The Canal de Isabel II retakes its plan to float 49% of its capital in the stock exchange”

Expansión, 18/2/10

Público, 12/10/08

La Vanguardia, 22/10/2009

“Esperanza Aguirre S.A. La gran privatizadora”

“Suez Environment se hace con la mayoría del capital del Grupo Agbar” [Suez Environment to take over most of the capital of the Agbar group”]

Changing choreographies of

power

Neoliberalization of environmental governance

Capital flows through the

hydrosocial cycle

Historical urban political

ecology

To analyse convergences and divergences in the modern urbanization

of water in Madrid and Barcelona

Domestication of the water flows

KEY CONCEPT: URBANIZATION

Urbanization as “a process by which new and more complex relationships of society and nature are created” (Keil 2003:729)

Urbanization of the water supply: the process of mobilization of water resources to keep pace with urban growth.

Ecological projects are always socio-political projects, and viceversa (Harvey 1996)

“to trace the flow of water through cities is to illuminate the functioning of modern societies in all their complexity” (Gandy 2002:22)

“the history of cities can be read as a history of water” (Gandy 2002:22)

City landscapes are “sculped into life-sustaining circulatory system through the interaction of the flow of water and the flow of money” (Gandy 2002:23)

SOME PREMISES…

“If we were to capture some of the metabolized flows that weave together the urban fabric and excavate the networks that brought them there, we would pass with continuity from the local to

the global, from the human to the non-human. These flows would narrate many

interrelated tales of the city […[ They would make up the (hi)story of a city of flows” (Kaika 2005:25)

Neoliberalism: a paradigm that seeks to naturalize the market as a mean for assessing and distributing life’s necessities and luxuries.

Neoliberalism arrives in different places in different ways, articulates with other political projects, takes multiple material forms, and can give rise to unexpected outcomes (Larner 2003:511): hybridity

Castree (2006): perplexing amorphousness of neoliberal reforms in environmental governance

Path specificity: Important to consider the specific array of historically contingent social and political forces

NEOLIBERALISM AND THE ENVIRONMENT

(TYPICAL) STAGES IN THE URBANIZATION OF WATER SUPPLY

1) Early 19th century: supremacy of private delivery

2) Late 19th and early 20th centuries: municipalization wave

3) Mid 20th century: increase in the role of the state (even nationalization)

4) Late 20th: private participation in the urban water supply

Neither MADRID nor especially BARCELONA followed exactly such steps

BARCELONA AND MADRIDCase studies

PRE-MODERN WATER SUPPLY AND URBAN GROWTH IN THE 19TH CENTURY

Rec Comtal City wells and other

ephemeral streams

Cerdà’s eixample: termination of the Rec Comtal model

Viajes del Agua: groundwater

Water vendors

Castro’s Ensanche: rupture of the historical urban limits

Barcelona Madrid

19th century Urban growth (Modern Urban Planning): key factor in the search for

new resources

THE ROAD TO MODERNITY

Second half 19th century: public and private initiatives

Groundwater Opposition of

landowners and industrialists to expand the water system

1848: Real Orden: projects to water Madrid

Surface water: Lozoya river

Debate public/private Failed private

initiative Public undertaking

Barcelona Madrid

Barcelona: production of scarcityMadrid: public initiative

From atomized suppliers to the private monopoly of water supply: Sociedad General de Aguas de Barcelona (French and Belgian capital)

1851: the Canal de Isabel II is created. State initiative

Lack of credit: privatizationfailed

Barcelona Madrid

THE CREATION OF CENTRALIZED SUPPLIERS

Diverging political projets, diverging socio-ecological projects

1899, 1905 and 1910: tenders to enlarge supply

State Commission: proposal of municipalization

Political change+typhus +WWI: municipalization failed

Economic crises and attempt of privatizationfailed

State-owned company (but different configurations)

Debate around the need to municipalize the CYII

Barcelona Madrid

EARLY 20TH CENTURY: FAILING MUNICIPALIZATION

Failed attempts to change the nature of the supplier

SGAB: “there is no need to search for more water”, “citizens consume little”, lack of hygienic habits

Metering generalized Maluquer (1920): high

priceslow consumption

1900-1930: important urban growth of Madrid

Water supply kept pace with urban growth

Metering generalized, water cheaper than Barcelona. High consumption.

Barcelona Madrid

CREATION OF SCARCITY VS. CREATION OF ABUNDANCE

Barcelona: production of scarcityMadrid: important mobilization of

resources

Important economic reforms in Catalunya

July 1936: Aguas de Barcelona Empresa Colectivizada

Unification of price

Reforms not as important as Barcelona

Canales del Lozoya Participation of

workers in the Board Improvement in labour

conditions

Barcelona Madrid

Important reforms at the social level but also at the economical level

A UTOPIAN BREAK: (BRIEF) COLLECTIVIZATION

FRANCO’S RULE: MASSIVE MOBILIZATION OF RESOURCES

Dramatic population growth (internal migration) Recurrent water problems and shortages

Barcelona Madrid

Scarcity concerns, population growth and political will triggers the incorporation of new

water flows

1950s: concession to the SGAB Llobregat

1960s: Ter transfer

1950s: Total regulation of the Lozoya river.

1960s: New rivers into the system

Source: Toran (1964). Las Grandes presas en España. Revista de Obras Públicas 2988:9-16

1934

97 Dams

1964

344 Dams

Francoist Spain:

Mobilization water resources for economic purposes and territorial articulation

DEMOCRACY, EUROPE, ECONOMIC CRISIS

Droughts hit hard. 1973: project to transfer water from the Ebro

Democracy+economic dowturn: Ebro transfer halted

Efforts continued to enlarge Madrid water supply system

Barcelona Madrid

Estabilization of water demand in the late 1970s and early 1980s due to the economic

downturnMultiple and multi-scalar layers of water

management

1990S: A CONFLICTUAL DECADE

Quality concerns Water wars in Barcelona

in the 1990s New proposals to bring

water from the Ebro: high contestation (2001)

Old projects of dams are revived for the Jarama and Sorbe rivers

Barcelona Madrid

Drought alarms European legislation sharply influencing water

policies

Socio-Environmental conflicts around water provision explode, especially in Barcelona

Both Madrid and Barcelona (cities) stop growing and even lose population from the 1980s onwards

Suburban growth in low density patterns: urban sprawl Swimming pools and lawns as new consumpiton

devices Uneven domestic water consumption, ranging from

100 to over 400 lpcd

Barcelona Madrid

WATER METABOLISM AND SUBURBANIZATION

Late 20th and early 21st century: Suburbanization of water scarcity

DROUGHT IN THE 2000S

The Tajo river as the new source

Creation of water markets?

Barcelona Madrid

Incorporation of resources from far beyond the territorial limitsDisplacement of the conflicts?

Desalination: a cornucopia?

Transfers back again: Rhone, Ebro

2000s: Severe and recurrent drought Mediatization of drought

The crises opens up the possibility to obtain water from further away

19th century: french capital; early 20th century: spanish capital

Spanish expansion (1960s and 1970s)

1980s: French capital Diversification and

internationalization (from 1980s)

1970s: early diversification (Hidráulica Santillana)

1990s: corporatization 2000s:

internationalization

Barcelona (SGAB, Agbar) Madrid (Canal de Isabel II)

THE ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY OF WATER SUPPLYOR HOW WATER LUBRICATES THE CIRCULATION OF CAPITAL (SWYNGEDOUW 1997)

From local/regional suppliers to multinational water companies

12 M people supplied >1200 municipalities >50% share Spanish

private water market

6 M people supplied (whole region of Madrid)

Expansion beyond Madrid

Agbar (Barcelona) Canal de Isabel II (Madrid)

Cáceres, 93,000

CAM >6M

INTERNATIONALIZATION AGBAR

Argentina starting point and main failure

Barcelona: AGBAR

INTERNATIONALIZATION CYII

1990s: some tenders in Latin America

World Bank (2001): CYII as a model to export

Colombia, Ecuador, República Dominicana

China as the new frontier

Madrid: Canal de Isabel II

DIVERSIFICATION: BEYOND THE WATER CYCLE

Bottled water Certification and

environmental control Waste management Health Other business

Energy Mobile

communications Environment

Barcelona Madrid

Many activities related to the Environment: new spheres/frontiers of capital accumulation

NEW CHOREOGRAPHIES OF POWER

“Foreignization” of the company (SUEZ) Blurring of the public-private frontier

Barcelona

NEW CHOREOGRAPHIES OF POWER

Context: neoliberal turn in urban governance in Madrid Rationale:

- Need of capital to cope with environmental needs and droughts

- Freedom of choice, popular capitalism Law approved to convert the CYII into a PLC Contestation and legal problems Process in a standstill, 2010 definitive privatization?

Madrid. Privatization of the Canal de Isabel II

HISTORY OF THE URBANIZATION OF WATER

Different ecological projectsDifference due to geographical reasons, to political reasons, and to the nature of the supplier

Madrid: key role of State intervention; status of Spanish capital city

Barcelona: continuous tension (but also close collaboration) between the public and the private sphere

Complex web of intricate power choreographies dialectical relation between State and Capital

Mediatization of the drought: the environment as an arena of power and spectacle (Brú 1997)

Resource scarcity: main argument for the expansion of the infrastructure, the creation of markets and the accumulation of capital

Old Hydraulic structuralism: water transfers and dams

New water structuralism: desalination (ecological modernization) but still water transfers (now more sophisticated through water markets)

DROUGHT: KEY ELEMENT IN THE ARTICULATION OF WATER POLITICS AND POLICIES

NEOLIBERALIZATION OF WATER SUPPLY (1)

Privatization: Public-Private Partnerships as a key element. Increase of private participation in the management of the resource.

Corporatization: New Private Management: the State emulates private practices and private ethosstep to ensure that a service remains public or prior step to privatization?

Commercialization: users as individual customers, redesign of institutions according to market principles

NEOLIBERALIZATION OF WATER SUPPLY (2)

Marketization: creation of water markets in both Madrid and Barcelona

Reregulation: the State plays a key role in rescripting the new choreographiesKarl Polany (2001[1944]:205): “no market economy separated from the political sphere is possible”

Commodification: incomplete commodification, fictitious commodity.

CRISIS AND NEOLIBERALIZATION

SCARCITY

DROUGHT

(Quantity)

More INFRASTRUCTURE

More efficiency in the consumption (increase prices)

Interconnect the water networks COMMODIFICATION

COMMERCIALIZATION

PRIVATIZATION

CORPORATIZATION

DE/RE-REGULATION

MARKETIZATION

FINANCIAL CRISIS of the public provider / regulator

SANITATION

ENV. QUAL.

(Quality)

More efficiency in the distribution (private management)

Social

Physical

More infrastructure

Increase the taxes on water

PRIVATIZATION

FUTURE PROSPECTS

The Great Transformation of the water supply in Madrid and Barcelona?

Barcelona Madrid

Agbar controlled by Suez

Desalination definitely controlled by private capital? Bulk water supply?

Total privatization of the Canal de Isabel II? Water markets in the Tajo?