1Contemporary French geography is now experiencing several debates which, together, engage the question of whether its critical capacities are apt for addressing contemporary societal issues, such as rising social inequality and environmental issues, among others in a vast spectrum of socio-cultural questions. The field is often criticized for its dependence on those institutions which formulate and implement public planning policy. Despite these debates, however, numerous researchers in the field of geography have found it difficult to propose analytical categories and a framework which could explore these “inequalities” and “power relations” (Clerval, 2012). In the environmental sector, this absence of any theoretical framework allowing for the interrogation of the “political dimension” of environmental questions (Chartier, Rodary, 2016) is equally felt. In these situations, French-speaking geographers have been invited to take up Anglophone references – “critical” or “radical” geography, political ecology, [1] etc. Numerous authors consider these approaches to be key to overcoming the defaults of French geographical research (Clerval, 2012; Gautier, Benjaminsen, 2012; Dufour, 2015; Chartier, Rodary, 2016).

2Other authors, however, argue that the French geographical field has never “ceased questioning its social role and its relationship to politics [… and] is deeply engaged with the social world” (Morange, Calbérac, 2012). Concretely speaking, more critical exhortations have led certain scholars to question the singularity of a manifesto (Chartier, Rodary, 2016) which calls for reform (Lavie, 2016) but, perhaps paradoxically, provides only a limited vision of power dynamics: “unfortunately, [the manifesto] under-emphasizes power relationships, focusing instead on ecological dynamics” (Demailly, 2017, p. 2). Some scholars thus seem to imply that only Anglophone theory can serve to “square the circle,” to find the necessary framework to bring geographical perspectives and power dynamics together, particularly as regards environmental questions. It is possible that this unflattering criticism persists due to an excessive segmentation within the discipline, one which limits exchanges between different fields of research: urban and rural geography, environmental issues and other kinds, which makes it easier to turn towards other disciplines or towards English-language works, whose generic character is less often called into question. For example, even the chapter in Chartier and Rodary’s manifesto which seeks to “bridge the gaps” between the “epistemological traditions” of French geography and Anglophone political ecology (Blanchon, 2016), only cites, among possible theoretical works of French geography, those of Claude and Georges Bertrand, introduced as the foundation for a Francophone environmental geography. Beyond the great diversity of works and subjects which make up political ecology, however, the field’s essential originality lies in the fact that it combines three “approaches” [2] – one each constructivist, systemic, and critical (Gautier, Benjaminsen, 2012). It is thus surprising that this literature review does not include any examples or analysis of the “systemic,” “critical,” or “constructivist” works (not to mention those which combine the three approaches) which have been published in French. After all, systemics has long been the common denominator of much of French geography (Orain, 2001). It remains so today, even though it takes new forms. Likewise, “constructivist” critiques have been a central part of the academic trend calling “classic” geography into question since the 1970s (Orain, 2009). Finally, critical proposals have not been lacking at all since the 1970s, although their intellectual history remains to be written and codified. With the exception of C. and G. Bertrand, the works of Jean-Pierre Marchand (1985) or the Dupont group’s studies, [3] or those of the THÉMA laboratory in Besançon, all of which can be considered as more comprehensive than critical, we can clearly see that the French field of environmental geography is not currently the field most in touch with contemporary research questions and social issues. Thus, while it is certainly relevant to ask “in what ways would borrowing [from radical political ecology] for the field of environmental geography in France” be useful (Blanchon, 2016), one could and should also ask which elements of French geographical study from the 1970s and 1980s can help us to both take up the critical and theory-based challenges facing contemporary environmental geography and to provide a French contribution to political ecology. We thus propose to examine the capacity of several theoretical propositions, all born out of the 1970s-1980s French geographical crisis, to provide constructivist, systemic, and/or critical approaches which are close to Anglophone political ecology and/or are able to enter into dialogue with that field. In this article, we will therefore begin with an explanation of certain elements of the field of political ecology, before characterizing the ways in which it can fruitfully be juxtaposed with a certain kind of Francophone work which takes relational and critical perspectives. To avoid remaining at a purely theoretical level, we will then show the heuristic potentials of this perspective via two case studies, examples of societal concerns around groundwater, one through the lens of a contemporary relational approach based on the work of French geographers, [4] and the other through the lens of political ecology. [5]

Relational, systemic, interdisciplinary and critical approaches

The Concept of Power, a theoretic pivot for integrating the political dimension of any relationship

11Multiple authors have shared their considerations on C. Raffestin’s role and precursors in the field (Crampton, Elden, 2007). They have, in fact, stressed the way he borrowed Foucault’s distinction between “power” (which is generic) – and which “operates from innumerable points” [12] (Raffestin 1980, p. 46) – and (state) Power. He thus calls for studying power, for the way it legitimates “rationalities,” and imposes its “truth,” the “social code… which is immanent to action,” that which is acceptable to say or do at a given moment in history, and thus for analysing knowledge as an element of power dynamics (Foucault, 1971 and 2015, p. 52; Raffestin, 1980, p. 39).

12Moreover, C. Raffestin suggests that power can be apprehended through studying the variable combinations of information and energy which are present in all relationships (Raffestin, 1980, p. 47-48), an idea which he also presented numerous times in an “ecological” formalisation (Raffestin, 1985). Information is connected with the production of knowledge, of representations, and rationalities; by energy, Raffestin refers to each “syntagmatic actor’s” potential to use resources disposable to them. These may be materials: biological objects, living beings, or available labour; they may also be time, distance, equipment, finance, logistics, physical layout, speed, and technology. They can be relational: elements of networks, parts of cycles, etc.; or emotion-related: anger, intuition, joy, fear, sensitivity, sadness, etc. Power is the result, at a given moment in history, of the relational valence between actors and the combination of information, energy, or informed-energy. “Knowledge” and its uneven distribution thus play a decisive role. This is why C. Raffestin, following Luis J. Prieto, argues that material realities should be distinguished from produced knowledge, for “man – next to this first, natural reality – creates another, second, historically-bounded reality, one which is formed by knowledge itself” (Prieto, 1975, 149). It is people who “invent material properties” and he considers this an exercise of power, “over material conditions but also over those men for whom the material issues are at stake” (Raffestin, 1980, p. 203 and p. 207). He also suggests that the words which are used to talk about non-human terrestrial elements also refer to these relationships and power dynamics between men and materials. This is why, he believes, materials are called “resources.” For C. Raffestin, “resources” do not exist, rather, they are constructed out of the material realities to which societies ascribe a meaning, inventing their properties. Thus, they are definitively “the product” of “relationships” (Raffestin, 1980, p. 203-204). This is also why, in Pour une géographie du pouvoir, C. Raffestin suggests analysing – through the lens of power – categories such as “population,” “territory,” and “resource,” – which would allow for a clearer understanding of the issues built within the interrelation of people, territories, and resources.

13We believe that certain elements of C. Raffestin’s thinking can be borrowed and used to build analysis grids which could be used in similar ways as are current practices in political ecology. We thus propose two case studies on two neighbouring areas, one using contemporary French critical geography and incorporating the theoretic propositions which we have just enumerated, and the other via political ecology analysis, here understood as the interface between biophysical ecology and the social sciences (Walker, 2005). Our research topic is the relationship between society and groundwater in two semi-arid regions in Spain. The effect suggests the abundant parallels and the congruence that we have underlined between the two schools of geography.

14We have thus decided to present the fruit of our research in Spain involving two cases facing a common paradox: in both regions groundwater continues to be over-tapped, despite judicial measures intended to stop this. In fact, the Campo de Dalías (studied through a Francophone geography lens) and Aquifer 23 in western La Mancha, which is meant to supply water for the Tablas de Daimiel national park (here studied through a political ecology lens) are both subject to overuse legislation (fig. 1).

Fig. 1

Situations of the two sites and their dominant representations

Situations of the two sites and their dominant representations

The Paradox of the “Miraculous” Campo de Dalías, a Relational Question

15This coastal plain, situated in south-eastern Spain, in the province of Almería, between the Mediterranean Sea and the Sierra de Gador, is generally considered as a miraculous model of agricultural development – for local institutions as well as for many local inhabitants. By applying critical geography and relational approaches to the Campo de Dalías, we will examine this discourse and study the history of its construction. We shall proceed by analysing référentiels [13] – or representations – at different social levels: national public policy discourses, regional discourses (re: water and agricultural policy), and the discourses wielded by local actors.

16As C. Raffestin suggests, we have taken interest in the terms that the surrounding society uses to refer to these “materials” – the groundwater – terms such as “water,” “resource,” “reserves,” and “ecosystems,” etc. These words are key to understanding the currently-existing relationship between society and the groundwater in question. Our analysis grid is adapted from C. Raffestin’s propositions, particularly those presented in the chapter on resources in Pour une géographie du pouvoir. We will thus be looking at two categories of analysis, both of which refer to processes which are in permanent interaction with one another (Blot, 2005, p. 42-58). The first consists of identifying the properties which are attributed to “water sources.” These can include various phenomena which are considered as potentialities or constraints, according to different representations and milieus. The second consists of analysing practices having to do with techniques, rules, and rationalities for acting on, extracting, or adjusting the properties of other (social or natural) parts of the relationship, in order to use them as resources or to limit or prevent risk. Understanding these processes helps to qualify and detail the relationships which are expressed within ideas such as “resources,” “risks,” and “drought,” [14] etc.

17The Campo de Dalías, a coastal plain covered with greenhouses, is a paradoxical system that could well have never existed in the place that it is (Auriac, Durand-Dastès, 1981). The province of Almería, hardly attractive, was known until the 1980s as a zone of net emigration and a population mainly localised inland (García Torrente, 2002, p. 392). The Campo de Dalías is a historic, national construction, one inaugurated to cater to a particular rationale: rectifying the problem of unequal distribution of “natural resources” in time and space (Clarimont, 1999; Marié, 2003; Blot, 2005). This was a management philosophy in line with the way that intellectuals at the time saw spaces and their properties, [15] which had great influence on developing political référentiels. The Campo de Dalías was then considered as one of the most propitious zones for irrigated agriculture on the national Spanish level, mainly thanks to its climate – its temperature, its long hours of sunlight, and its wind from the sea. Despite those facts, however, it is also located in a region which is considered “deficient” in surface hydrology, though it holds large underground “reserves” or “resources.” Just as in any hydro-social-system, (as we may say in summary) its water sources represent, above all, water which can be used in different ways, primarily for agriculture. Consequently, its management has consisted of “integrally mobilizing the waters” underground, but also by provisioning these with natural or artificial surface outlets, seeking to limit what has been called “losses” of water into the sea (Blot, 2005).

18Based on a certain intellectual and political discourse which magnified the productive capacity of sunlit land and, moreover, prioritised the regadío at the expense of the secano, the water law of 13th June 1879, in force until 1985, hierarchized different uses of water, focusing primarily on agricultural uses and the adjustments needed to promote them. [16] These intellectual and political concepts were then incorporated into a power framework where information (the properties of milieus and the rationales for utilising land and water) was enacted with all the energetic force of a dictatorship: Franco’s. His regime thus justified the Instituto Nacional de Colonización (INC)’s 1941 plan to colonize the secanos, using groundwater. The Campo de Dalías’s land was thus handed out and wells were dug. Adapting and improving agricultural techniques [17] and extracting more water thus led to the expansion of arable, irrigated land and enabled the diversification of commercial activity in the Campo. This also determined the relationship between different sectors of activity (during a phase which can be considered systemogenesis). The Campo thus expanded from 750 hectares in 1953 to 5,000 hectares in 1973, to grow to about 20,511 hectares in 2002 (Pulido Bosch et al., 1989; Consejería de Agricultura y Pesca, 2002, p. 12).

19The Instituto Nacional de Colonización’s policy was intended to grow Spanish agriculture and to develop an agricultural middle class of smallholders. This goal is considered to have been accomplished by the 1970s (Mignon, 1974; De los Llanos, 1990). One important factor in the success of this political project was the shift from autarkic economic policies towards more open and liberal policies in the 1960s. A desire to integrate the European market and garner greater outlets for the nation’s agricultural production has also contributed to ensure the Campo’s longevity. Small family farms focusing on growing spring vegetables in counter-seasons – since the Campo’s founding and up into the 1990s – have transformed the former desert into an El Dorado, a hydro-socio-systemic complex. All of its sectors of activity are interdependent; the farmers rely on providers for plastic, seed, and fertilizers. There are also external professional sectors and other services which are all part of the system (Blot, 1996).

20In part for this reason, although the Instituto de Reforma y Desarrollo Agrario (IRYDA) – formerly the INC – withdrew their previous policy recommendations in the 1980s, cultivated areas in the Campo only continued to grow, for the farmers there had wholly appropriated the logic of counter-season production. But the stories of miracles often omit the fact that the construction and exploitation of the Campo de Dalías has had two primary consequences: the groundwater was overused and qualitatively altered (Real Decreto 2618/1986 of December 14th, 1986) (Sánchez González, 2005, p. 87; González Asensio et al., 2003, p. 14-20) and local agriculture grew to depend on cheap, often illegal labour.

21The 1985 water law, intended to bring groundwater management into line with general water management, did not stop the Campo from continuing to grow. One could even say that the legislation which followed (Loi 46/1999; Loi 10/2001) only fed the hungry system! And the Campo’s hydrological deficit also continued to grow, from 21.5 square hectometres per year in 1995 to 50 square hectometres per year in 2000. Today, it is estimated that, due to climate change, the deficit could reach 85 square hectometres per year by 2025 (Cuitó et al., 2008).

22Ten years after the first slogan, “Agua para todos,” [18] made headlines in Murcia and Andalusia’s regional press, certain local inhabitants believe that there are no longer any limits on the Campo’s agricultural development. The primary rationales evoked to justify this discourse stem from a heightened confidence in technological innovation and an almost-mythical belief that water is an unlimited resource: drip irrigation allows for more land to be irrigated using the same amount of water; hydroponic and other greenhouse soilless cultivation techniques allow plants to grow without soil and sometimes even on multiple levels, which also increases the space available for cultivation; likewise, desalination techniques enable the Campo access to water resources from the Mediterranean.

23For the second point, horticultural choices, particularly as regards what types of soil to use, have led to an exclusive dependence on a large, cheap workforce. Without it, the system would not nearly be so profitable (Daum, Daum, 2010; Daum, 2015). Thus, since the 1980s, “Intensive cultivation of Mediterranean fruits and vegetables have taken advantage of an immigrant workforce, characterised by flexibility, acceptance of low salaries, and their ready availability” (Roux, 2006, p. 113). This fact gives the lie to the myth that the Campo de Dalías supports family farms and labour, rather than a capitalist agricultural system where profit mostly goes to the property owners and the financiers instead of to the labour force. Immigrants officially make up 20% of the population of la Mojonera – a town at the heart of the Campo de Dalías –, in fact, immigrants might make up twice that if undocumented workers were also counted (García Torrente, 2002, p. 406).

24The Campo de Dalías thus depends on an asymmetrical relationship which goes little-criticized locally, for it would seem that all defend the system: the inhabitants all depend, to a greater or lesser degree, on the system as it exists. And everything takes place as if the system was truly capable of proving its arbitrary logic and rationale to be legitimate and true. The farm workers rarely protest their working conditions. They claim to be satisfied to be able to work and to be granted the “favour” of living near the greenhouses (in makeshift housing which they build themselves from leftover agricultural materials: pallets, plastic…). For them, the Campo is also their entrée into Europe; by working here, if they are able to obtain a residence permit, they can later move to other parts of Spain or other countries in the EU. Those who work for several years without obtaining this golden ticket are, however, more critical. Different associations are active, denouncing an unequal social model based on segregation (Checa Olmos, 2004; Checa Olmos, Arjona Garrido, 2005). They fight racism and spatial segregation, condemn housing policies, and assist immigrant families. Documenting these inequalities and struggling to defend themselves takes up much of the members of these associations’ energy. What’s more, these members, faced with the difficulty of funding their functioning, managing both their job and their work with the association, avoiding emotional burnout, they also need to gain difficult-to-find information to support their arguments, and to deal with criticism, threats, and even physical aggression. The paradoxical nature of the situation lays its issues bare.

25Although in 1996, 56% of the area’s workforce worked in agriculture, this is no longer the case. Today, the service sector makes up the largest percentage of workers. Nonetheless, most jobs are in some way related to agriculture and depend on the greenhouses’ existence. Beyond farming, there are plastic-producers, greenhouse-builders, suppliers, producers and sellers of seed, fertilisers, and phytosanitary products, as well as research and development systems. There are also numerous sectors which package and distribute produce. All of these commercial activities have contributed to the area’s demographic boom, which – in turn – has boosted the construction industry, ready to build housing for this population, and various service industries to cater to them. Moreover, all of these economic sectors are tied together by their dependence on materials, particularly on water.

26Despite these physical and social asymmetries, testament to the power dynamics at work, and which call the principles of “spatial justice,” on which the model was based, into question, [19] the hydro-socio-system persists and continues to be supported. Supply-side water policies continue to nourish this coastal plain, despite the facts that the inhabitants’ access to water is unequal and that the groundwater is salinizing, both facts which could have plainly stopped the Campo de Dalías from continuing to flourish. Internal and external constraints, both legislative and social, do exist. (There are EU injunctions, for instance, such as the Water Framework Directive 2000/60/EC; social conflicts could also come into play). For the time being, however, none of these constraints has led to any radical modification of the Campo’s structure or the way it functions: it remains resilient. The indicators which its defenders cite also tend to speak in its favour (the unemployment rate is low and the area’s agriculture continues to grow). Moreover, these indicators are information-elements (representations and rationales), considered as true, though they are constructed in time, and have been historically validated beyond the Campo de Dalías and beyond Spain. Finally, this focus on diagnosing the water “deficit” perpetuates the myth of an opposition between a “wet” and a “dry” Spain, further naturalising the issues at stake and in doing so, de-politicising them.

The perpetual saving of the “Las Tablas de Daimiel” wetlands in La Mancha: A political ecology analysis

27For the approximately 200,000 visitors [20] which the Tablas de Daimiel welcomes each year, the illusion that they are exploring one of the last tablas (fluvial floodzones where groundwater also mounts to the surface) on the Spanish peninsula is perfectly maintained. Water birds fly over still swamps in this oasis in the middle of the manchega plain, scorched by the sun and the wind. The silence is only broken by birdsong and frogs croaking. Furthermore, if these same visitors only read the signs and the brochures provided by the park, they will not suspect that these wetlands, protected by the Spanish State (as a national park) and by the European Commission (which has designated it a IBA-SPA zone), and by UNESCO (as a biosphere reserve), as well as the Ramsar Convention on wetlands, is in fact no more than a stage set.

28At the same time, since the approximately 2,000 hectare wetlands national park was founded in 1973, different actors (elected officials, ecologists, institutions, and academics) have maintained the same discourse, repeating the same slogan: “Save” Daimiel (salvar Daimiel). But save it from what or from whom? From what threat?

29The wetlands which make up the Tablas de Daimiel are located in the Guadiana basin, south-west of what is called the aquifer 23 or the llanura manchega. This aquifer, which feeds these wetlands, among others, has been intensively used for agriculture since the 1980s. Since that time, its level has decreased over forty meters (García Rodríguez, 2007). This is why it was provisionally declared overused in 1987, a declaration which was reaffirmed definitively in 1994 (Confederación Hidrográfica del Guadiana, 2008).

30At the same time, the dramatic decrease in the water level in the Tablas de Daimiel National Park put the Spanish government (as well as the park’s IBA, Ramsar, and biosphere reserve classifications) in the proverbial hot seat internationally. The State was protecting wetlands which no longer had any water and which now also experienced chronic underground fires, due to periodic spontaneous combustion of dried-out peat bogs. In the late 1980s, thus began a spiral where “urgent measures to ‘save’ Daimiel” followed one after the next, each proposing the same solution: if the Tablas de Daimiel are dried out, they must be refilled with water, wherever that water might come from. It took the European Commission and UNESCO until 2009 to initiate proceedings against Spain for the destruction of a protected wetlands. In doing so, they called the considerable development of irrigated agriculture into question.

31The development of irrigated agriculture in Spain was tied to the self-representation that Spanish society constructed after the loss of its last colonies (Cuba and the Philippines, in 1898). In the late 19th century, the Spanish gaze turned onto its own lands, envisioning a new kind of interior colonization, one based around agriculture and water (Gómez-Mendoza, Ortega Cantero, 1996; Swyngedouw, 2007). Agricultural policy thus gave priority to irrigated cultivation rather than traditional dry farming (Viladomiu, Rossel, 1998).

32The manchega plains, on which up until the 1980s, 60% of its territory was covered in crops requiring little water, (such as wheat, barley, grasses for sheep grazing, and wine grapes) experienced a rapid and extraordinary transformation into an agriculture based around the use of underground water sources, particularly aquifer 23. Developing techniques for digging and constructing wells and new watering systems, as well as lowered energy prices and government agricultural subventions were the primary reasons for this spectacular shift (Ruiz Pulpón, 2006), but not the only ones. In this decade, the Spanish state transferred authority on things agricultural to the newly-created autonomous government of Castille-La Mancha. This region, which considered itself penalized by previous national agricultural policy, thus sought to develop its economy via reorganizing agriculture, but in a way which made it dependant on a non-renewable source: the groundwater (Viaña Remis, 1994). A policy of encouragement can only succeed, however, with a pool of likely adopters ready and willing to take up the challenge. In Castille-La Mancha, this was found in the people who remained behind when many Spanish rural inhabitants flocked to the cities in the 1950s (Ruiz Pulpón, 2006), and who dreamed of leaving behind the stigmas of underdevelopment and poverty La Mancha had been saddled with: the image of a backwards region, controlled by the Church and by large landowners (Sánchez Sánchez, 1999; Pardo Pardo, 2000).

33But the groundwater, an invisible factor, always forgotten by hydraulic planners, has been abundantly and silently extracted by the farmers, often illegally and generally without public oversight. In 1974, the Spanish hydrogeologist M. Ramón Llamas called it “hydro-schizophrenia,” borrowing from the expression coined by Raymond L. Nace in 1970 (Pizarro Yáñez, 2016) to categorise the marked difference between how surface and groundwater are managed – throughout the world, but particularly in so-called arid or semi-arid regions such as those in Spain, which draw particularly on the latter. In 1985, though a new law on water use included underground resources as part of the public domain, nothing in management practice or use changed.

34As soon as the first symptoms of this hydrological disequilibrium began to manifest in the Tablas de Daimiel wetlands, various voices were raised, denouncing what has been called ever since the late 1980s an unprecedented ecological catastrophe (Ramón Llamas, 1988): the hydrological function of these wetlands had inversed and, losing their role as an outlet for groundwater, they became an inlet. In other words, the Tablas had ceased to be a reservoir and was now simply a collecting-spot for rainwater which would then drain into the aquifer.

35The Tablas must be filled with water, the national authorities insisted, and this is what they did (Europa Press, 2009; El Mundo, 2010). But the water which was poured in, in order to “save” the Tablas de Daimiel had, in fact, counter-intuitive effects. For one, as the Tablas had become a collecting-spot for water which would drain into the overexploited aquifer, the new water did not long remain on the surface, sinking rather below ground, where it was subject to agricultural drainage. Moreover, adding the new water only worsened the problem. The newly-added water was very different from the original water in the wetlands. This caused changes in flood patterns, in the water’s geochemistry (for example, the altered salinity of the water led to one of the park’s emblematic plants, Cladium mariscus – which required specific growing conditions – being replaced by the invasive species Phragmites australis). There were other consequences, too: changes in aquatic biocenosis and in the populations of migratory birds. The red-crested porchard – Netta rufina – a rare bird in Spain, has disappeared from the park (Fernández Lop, 1996). The wetlands have not been saved, instead, they have simply been replaced by a “duck pond”; they have become an “ecological desert” (Rámon Llamas, 1990). As Jan-Bernard Bouzillé has mentioned (2014), human interference in how wetlands function modifies their ecology. Of this, the Tablas de Daimiel National Park is a textbook example.

36The water which was brought in to “save” the wetlands came from two principal sources: some came from wells dug within the national park; more water (particularly in periods of severe drought) was brought in through the Trasvase Tajo-Segura (TTS) [21] – the Tagus-Segura Water Transfer – the pipeline locally known as the tubería manchega, [22] an official euphemism used in post-Francoist Spain in order to avoid the term “inter-basin transfer,” a contested phrase because it reminds Spaniards of the hydraulic infrastructure built under Franco’s dictatorship.

37The Trasvase Tajo-Segura was initially designed to cross through Castille-La Mancha without supplying that region in water. The water that now comes through the tubería manchega, intended for the Tablas de Daimiel wetlands, greatly increased the amount of water available to farmers near the national park, who have noticed a significant rise in the level of their wells, once the water filtered through the wetlands. This first use of the tubería manchega for environmental purposes, when it was initially designed to carry drinking water, has also reactivated the 30-year-old debate between proponents of agriculture and those who seek to protect the wetlands: “If the environment can benefit from the water transferred by the tubería manchega, wouldn’t it be even more fair if farmers who suffer from water-use restrictions could use it too?” [23] (Gratacós, 2009).

38The tubería manchega was, after all, planned in the late 20th century as an “emblematic work” (Agencia del agua de Castilla-La Mancha, 2017), meant to provide 59 communities in the llanura manchega with drinking water. Today, the system is still under construction, incessantly modified by order of the Ministry of Agriculture and the Environment. The last agreement (Boletín Oficial del Estado, 2016) provides for an investment of 230 million euros, 30 million of which are to be paid by the Castille-La Mancha regional government. The new deadline for its completion, when it is expected to be put into use, is 2020.

39After the work was temporarily interrupted in 2013, a fact for which the two major Spanish political parties, PP and PSOE blamed each other, [24] the construction continues today. A major portion of the central canal works and several branches have already been built, including the one towards the Tablas de Daimiel National Park in 2009 in order to “save” it. It is nearly impossible to find precise public information on the water to be provided in this domestic transfer; after all, this is sensitive information, the dissemination of which risks reviving regional rivalries between areas which all depend on water from the Trasvase Tajo-Segura, in particular between Castille-la Mancha and Murcia. Water transported by the massive Trasvase Tajo-Segura is, in fact, a source of envy between these two autonomous communities, to the point that in Spain, the term “water war,” refers to this conflict.

40While the tubería manchega project makes slow progress, numerous voices – particularly representatives of the region of Murcia, as well as ecologists – have spoken up to denounce Castille-La Mancha’s hypocrisy in defending the project for social and now environmental reasons (to “save” the Tablas de Daimiel), but conceal other concerns: irrigation for local agriculture [25] and large urban-development projects. Pertaining to this question of urban development, one colossal project should be mentioned for the fact of its disproportion: promoted since 1999 by the castellano-manchego government is the “Reino de Don Quijote,” [26] a resort and casino space, a mini-“Las Vegas” in the middle of the llanura manchega plain, with golf courses, luxury apartments, gardens, casinos, and even a four-hectare swimming pool. [27] Even in their most recent revisions – from 2006 and 2009, the project’s planners have not specified where the water needed to run this enormous complex would come from. Due to the economic crisis which has hit Spain in the last few years, and the corresponding real estate bubble, which caused the construction sector to collapse, the project has been put on hold, but it could be recommenced at any moment (Cañizares Ruiz, Rodríguez Domenech, 2014).

41The Castille-La Mancha government further feeds the “water war” by denouncing the negative environmental consequences of inter-basin water transfers and the waste of water brought by the Trasvase Tajo-Segura in Murcia, which uses it for urban development when theoretically it was meant to be used for agriculture. [28] Castille-La Mancha has difficulty justifying its own water transfer to the comarca of La Mancha, however, either for the use of its inhabitants or for a so-called environmental rescue of the Tablas de Daimiel national park.

42The summer of 2015 also witnessed a resurgence of the “water war” between the two regions sharing the Trasvase Tajo-Segura (Sevillano, 2015; ABC, 2016), no doubt because of the fact that the Left once more took control of the Castille-La Mancha regional government after the May 2015 elections. Raising the flag of “La Mancha’s water for manchegos” leads, however, to confusion on two levels, by amalgamating the “manchego” with the “castellano-manchego” and calling the territory’s identity into question, and by politically “naturalising” the zones which give and receive water.

43The first ambivalence stems from the fact that La Mancha, a natural and historical comarca in central Spain, has no administrative demarcation. It makes up one part of the autonomous community of Castille-La Mancha, which has had its own regional government and political authorities since 1978. The autonomous community is quite heterogeneous, made up of comarques which can markedly differ from La Mancha socio-economically, environmentally, and culturally, such as, for example, the Montes de Toledo and La Alcarria.

44Castille-La Mancha’s autonomy, a result of the democratisation process which began in Spain with Franco’s death, was effectively imposed on these five provinces of central Spain, which shared no common history, according to a process of territorial reorganization which sought to take into account historic nationalisms (Catalonia’s, Galicia’s, and the Basque Country’s) (Mora Rodríguez, 1998; Fernández Galiano, 2000). For the inhabitants, however, the new territory seemed to lack a regional identity; it did not feel like a community that one could belong to. The region’s political authorities therefore took up the idea that their people had been unfairly treated by the Spanish central government, which had “stolen their water” and given it to other, neighbouring autonomous communities, in order to construct a castellano-manchego regional sentiment, comparable to that founded on the issue of water in Murcia (Campillo, 2005; Salinas Palacios, 2012). Other comarques beside La Mancha remain fairly unconcerned by this rhetorical construction, however, as they are relatively indifferent to the claims the regional government makes on the water from the Trasvase Tajo-Segura.

45The second ambivalence centres on a political interpretation of the natural world and inferences about how the catchment basin is divided, which in turn determine where the zones which give and receive water are considered to belong, leading to identity crisis and conflict (Bravard, 2000). In plainer terms, underscoring the political assertion is the idea that the Tagus river belongs to the autonomous community of Castille-La Mancha, and that transferring its water to the autonomous community of Murcia is a territorial injustice. In fact, however, the concept is largely artificial, as the Tagus basin also crosses three other regions of Spain [29] and has its outlet in Portugal…

46But as far as water is concerned, what one criticizes in one place is what is praised elsewhere. Sanctimonious pretexts of providing local inhabitants with water or preserving wetlands are now no more than justifications for water-transfer policies. The tubería manchega has thus become a figurative construction, as well as a real one. It reifies the power struggles between these two autonomous regional governments and the central government. Water is used as a pawn, a figure thrown about in the discourses of all of the parties at play to defend their interests and the power dynamic.

47Likewise, in the discourse of regional actors, managing La Mancha’s hydro-socio-systems takes place along two supposedly antagonistic axes: irrigated agriculture and the protection of aquatic ecosystems. Moreover, these discourses sustain the ambiguity between these two goals, in the end simply perpetuating the over thirty-year-old interregional water conflict, to the tune of the oft repeated, always useless “salvar las Tablas de Daimiel.”