"We'll have to harvest the fruit, and simply throw it on the ground to prevent the trees from dying." That's what lies ahead for the drought-stricken farming community on Catalonia's Lleida Plain, according to Pere Roque, head of the Lleida branch of farmers' association ASAJA. He was speaking to ElNacional.cat on the day that the unprecedented step was taken of closing Catalonia's largest irrigation system, the Canal d'Urgell, just at the start of the dry season - because, although agriculture depends on it, so do 80,000 people for their drinking water, and there isn't enough to go round. Thus, scarcely a drop of water will reach the 70,000 hectares of cereals and fruit trees, which could even be doomed. The canal will open its floodgates once a month so that 121 villages and 2,000 farms can fill their reservoirs and ponds. ElNacional.cat visited the town of Castellnou de Seana in Pla d'Urgell county to hear the testimony of burned-out farmers who are fed up with being ignored by the Catalan government.
"No one governs in Catalonia"
"The country's infrastructures should have been renovated after the severe drought of 2008 but the lesson was not learned," Pere Roque told ElNacional.cat. "Now it is not enough for president Pere Aragonès to come out with the statement that, in the medium term, new desalination plants and water treatment plants must be built. Up till now he has not said that the drought is the most serious problem of Catalonia. Planning new infrastructures in the medium term in 2023 means that they will not be ready next year, in 2025 or 2026 and there will be no harvest or anything here."
Francesc Pascual, irrigator of the Canal d'Urgell, is incensed that the authorities have not said anything to the people who are facing the drama of the drought: "I haven't heard any reassuring message from anyone, not from the Casa Canal irrigation management, nor from the Lleida provincial administration, nor from the Generalitat, nor from the cooperatives. They don't say anything! If they want to maintain farming in Lleida they have to help us. Otherwise, it's over and, up till now, those in power have said nothing. No one governs here. It has already been shown with the rabbit plague that they let absolutely everything go to ruin. They do not find any effective solution. In the end it seems that they are focusing everything so that four large companies or multinationals are left and that small farmers end up disappearing", says Pascual.
"If they don't help us, we won't make it"
"The situation is so serious that both the Catalan and the Spanish governments must help us immediately. It's unbelievable that we will have to throw our apples and pears on the ground and not be compensated. In this case, there is no agricultural insurance that is valid. Therefore, the state has to declare a disaster area, the Spanish agriculture ministry must provide funds together with the Catalan ministry of climate action and they must cover the agri-food loss and pay money to the farmers, whether they have fruit or cereal. At the moment, however, the governments have not given us any guarantee of anything," says Pere Roqué.
"Our children want to leave"
"If we don't harvest the fruit and throw it directly on the ground the trees will be dying in two or three months. This, however, is not covered by agricultural insurance." assures the president of ASAJA Lleida. "We ask the Catalan and Spanish governments to step in because otherwise, it will be totally impossible", he argues. It has not yet been clarified how much water from the Canal d'Urgell will be released from time to time to prevent the trees from dying. They say that no one is explaining absolutely anything to them: "neither the government here, nor the one there!" Alfalfa, corn, barley and wheat will not be saved either, in fact these winter crops are already dying. "The government has to help us, we have just had a particularly critical year for agriculture and now, this, this disaster never seen in the 160-year history of the Canal d'Urgell. We've spent hours pruning the trees, sulfating, and so on. If they don't help us, it'll be impossible to keep going," says Josep Maria Salvadó, irrigator of the Canal d'Urgell. "They need to clarify, once and for all, what we can count on and what we can't. They're not saying anything! We don't know whether to stop working or not, and our children are already saying that they'll look to make a living elsewhere," says Francesc Pascual.
"Even God has forsaken you"
"If they don't help us we won't be able to throw the fruit on the ground and all the trees will die because we don't have the money to take it on. As an old farmer in my area told me: 'Even God has abandoned you'", explains Josep Maria Salvadó, with the closure of the Canal d'Urgell, he has been left without a single drop of water for his crops. "Climate change hurts agro-food production above all. All the politicians, when they are in the electoral campaign, tell us that they want the rural areas of the country to be full of people, but the opposite will happen, very soon Catalonia will be empty because we will have to stop producing food", says Pere Roqué.
Below, ElNacional.cat's report and interviews, in Catalan, with the farmers and irrigators of Lleida: