The far right has once again resorted to one of its favorite hoaxes to point out that at least a good part of what happened in the Valencian Community is due to the “criminal explosions of dams” that the The EU is said to be carrying out this in Spain.
Vox President Santiago Abascal responded Wednesday with “If there are guilty people… you are the first to apply your criminal law to blow up dams,” Abascal wrote.
He wasn’t the only one. Bertrand Ndongo, agitator of the Vox community, was inspired by history to recall that after the floods of 1957, “Franco immediately launched a plan for reservoirs and dams, to avoid disasters” like those of these days – here, a strategy which according to the ultras “Smart people” were killed when “they started to dynamite these works”. Both messages were reproduced and amplified by the usual plethora of media, people and robots in an environment ultra dedicated to generating noise and attempting to spread lies.
Nevertheless, several users and experts have had the patience to answer these two questions: in the Valencian Community, no large dams have been removed recently, only a few spillways that do not have the capacity to contain an overflow. Weirs, small dams, do not hold back water, they only hold it back until the river overflows above them and continues its course.
From dams to the “waste” of water discharged into the sea
Abascal and Ndongo were using a mantra that they have already used on other occasions and which is part of a whole denialist discourse around water management, which begins by criminalizing the alleged destruction of dams and reservoirs and ends by regretting that every day “wastes” water. when rivers flow into the sea.
This is a recurring theme among Holocaust deniers and right-wing extremists. It began, at least massively, when drought hit the peninsula in the spring of 2023. “Sánchez destroyed 256 dams and reservoirs,” said a message that spread in these circles. “Without these dams and reservoirs, there is less water and without water, there is no agriculture or livestock,” the argument continues.
Since then, at least the hoax has changed recipients, once it was established that the removal of these ongoing river obstacles – “mostly obsolete” and more barriers than dams, not large reservoirs, of course – is an obligation arising from the European Biodiversity Strategy to comply with the Water Framework Directive. This time, Abascal at least hits the target.
Not in the message. The objective of the Strategy – which states that by 2030 at least 25,000 kilometers of rivers must be released so that they “become free again” – is to “recover freshwater ecosystems and the natural functions of rivers ( ….), to correct the very negative effects produced by the transversal works on fish species and the imbalances in the sediment regime and transport. Almost half of Spain’s rivers are in poor condition, mainly due to the existence of these obstacles.
The organization Dam Removal reported that over the past two years, 241 of these barriers have been removed in Spanish classes. “All of these obstacles, at some point, exceed their useful life. They no longer meet their economic objectives and even pose security problems,” says the organization. The Ecological Transition has identified more than 18,500 transversal works only in the basins under its jurisdiction – not counting those managed by the autonomous communities. “Weirs and dams with an average height of less than two meters” stand out, underlines the ministry.
WWF water sector manager Rafael Seiz told this newspaper that it was also unnecessary infrastructure. “99% of what was eliminated had no supply function. Not for irrigators either. “The majority are weirs or small dams and they represent a very small percentage of everything that exists. »
“Small dams and weirs are not enough to guarantee supply, nor to regulate a river. And in small towns with small dams, they are connected to a larger capacity system that is cheaper and more efficient. There is more guarantee and security,” concluded the expert.
