Transforming communal irrigation

The common origins and practices of these mountain irrigation systems relate to Berber groups that developed complex systems of acequias (canals) without any external influence from a central administration, unlike other larger systems in the middle and downstream part of the basin. Thus, irrigation systems like Férez or Letur, located in the eastern part of Sierra del Segura were designed and subsisted autonomously, irrigating by gravity huertas (orchards) whose layout and infrastructures had barely changed until the end of the 20th Century.

This autonomy and cultural links amidst villages of Sierra del Segura and other surrounding territories (which extend beyond the Segura basin) contributed to conform a ‘speech community’ with an extraordinarily abundant vocabulary related to water and irrigated agriculture. Hence, communities of irrigators like Fuentes de Letur (Letur) or La Mora y Los Tollos (Férez) historically constructed meanings of water access and use that became inscribed in language, signs, and codes, but also in the materials of ‘traditional’ infrastructures and technologies and the biodiversity associated to them. In this sense, the interactions that emerge from ‘human’ and ‘non-human’ actors within these communal irrigation systems have political implications that shape livelihoods and agroecosystems. 

However, much of the infrastructures, cultural practices, and associated ecosystems of ‘traditional’ irrigation systems are disappearing with the ‘modernization’ of irrigation systems, impacting the languages and knowledges of these communities of irrigators. State-led initiatives of ‘modernization’ have managed to transform 73% of the irrigation systems in the basin in 2022 (CHS), pioneering an irrigation transformation in Spain that is expanding rapidly to other regions of the country. This radical shift not only implies a significant loss in terms of diversity of vocabularies, practices, and ways of knowing; it also entails a transformation of the local political orders that are progressively assimilated by centralized basin dynamics, jeopardizing the very existence of communal irrigation.

In 2003, the Castilla-La Mancha Government officially declared the ‘modernization’ of the irrigation systems of “Elche de la Sierra, Férez, Liétor, Letur, Socovos, and others” of general interest (BOE, 2003b, p. 46944), all located in Sierra del Segura. This decree included a broad number of communities of irrigators, some of which never requested the ‘modernization’ of their systems, as it was the case of Letur. The top-down nature of these ‘modernization’ plans, fostered by municipal and regional authorities, reveals how power relations manifest in spatial practices, including the production and control of space by dominant groups.

The case of the Community of Irrigators la Mora y los Tollos (CIMT) in Férez, whose ‘modernization’ was fostered and negotiated by a local elite of politicians and irrigators, is a recent example of how powerful actors instrumentalize scarcity and induce water reallocations within the SRB. Research conducted in this town and its historical irrigation system in 2021-2022 illustrates how the rapid and successive transformations of water governance throughout the last 40 years impacted the CIMT and its irrigated agroecosystem, which subsisted for centuries through traditional irrigation infrastructures and practices.

Such transformations started with the proliferation of groundwater extractions above the CIMT’s water spring in the 80s. Especially, with the well of the municipality of Férez, responsible for drinking water supply in the town, which sought to ensure groundwater access before the prohibition of digging new wells after the Water Act of 1986. The evolution of the spring’s water flow reflects how throughout the 90s the main water spring of Férez decreased its flow in 83%, largely due to groundwater overabstractions from the municipal’s well.

The decrease of water flows in the spring radically affected irrigation within the CIMT, fully dependent on this source for agricultural production. The solution to this lack of water was proposed by a group of local leaders linked to regional political parties: to dig a new well to ensure water availability for the CIMT. This was possible as communities of irrigators have the right to restitute their lost water flows through groundwater abstractions, a measure that many irrigators refused, arguing that the irrigated areas of Férez do not have good enough climatic conditions to make vegetable production profitable if they had to be irrigated from a well. However, community and political leaders (including one of the mayors during the water levels’ decrease in the 90s) managed to dig the well, arguing a “need to restore the scarce water flow of the spring to serve the historically irrigated areas”.

Not only did this understanding of water availability depoliticize the reasons behind the depletion of the spring, but it also contributed to naturalizing a sort of chronic lack of water in Férez amidst the irrigators of the CIMT. Yet, the leaders of the CIMT drew on water scarcity as the main obstacle to overcome in order to be able to irrigate, leading to a new next step in the transformation of their territory: the ‘modernization’ of the irrigation system, implying the pressurization of water distribution and the implementation of drip irrigation.

Despite the partial financing of the works through public subsidies, this new system required the participation of all irrigators so that it could be profitable, which did not happen. Furthermore, the project was deficiently designed and provoked numerous breakdowns, resulting in overruns that indebted many irrigators. The CIMT itself became indebted with the local electric company, owned by the mayor mentioned before, as it could not afford the energy costs of groundwater abstractions. These problems created a conflict between ‘traditional’ and ‘modern’ irrigators, including the lack of maintenance in sections dependent on ‘modernized’ irrigators and the plain destruction of lined canals to force irrigators to join the ‘modernized’ system. Consequently, most irrigators could not irrigate through any of the systems, and in 2022 relied on jugs, drums, and tanker trucks to irrigate their crops.

Currently, two main projects are being promoted to solve the problems described and to boost irrigation in the municipality of Férez: a new ‘modernization’ plan for the CIMT, and a new project of ‘social irrigation’. The latter has been fostered by the regional government to stop population decrease in rural areas of Castilla La Mancha. However, big landowners have taken advantage of these projects and this seems to be the case in Férez, where the largest landowner is the owner of the local electric company, an ex mayor of the municipality in the second half of the 1990s, and the owner of the substitution well temporarily conceded to the CIMT. The fact that the potential new project is adjacent to the CIMT raised alarms of some irrigators about possible water redistributions from the well, a situation that occurs in other parts of the Segura basin.

Letur: If you see your neighbor's beard on fire…