A couple of days have seen the thermometers top 43C but other than that we’ve mostly hovered around the mid- to upper-30s. And for Seville that is unusual, especially if previous years are anything to go by.
What’s not in the slightest bit unusual is that it hasn’t rained for a long time. In fact, I can’t actually remember the last time it rained, let alone the last time it rained significantly.
I’m not complaining. The days are still hot, even if sometimes the nights are uncomfortable. But with air con and a fan it doesn’t get to you much.
What is perhaps more unusual is that despite it not raining here in Seville for, well, let’s be honest, several months, the taps are still running and there are no water restrictions. You can have a shower, a bath, you can water your plants, you can hose down your terrace, you could even fill a bucket and pour it over your head if you really wanted to.
Standing on our terrace you can look out across the east of the city and see hundreds if not thousands of flats and houses, each one no doubt using many litres of water every single day. Taking a train down to Jerez last weekend took us past acres and acres of sunflower crops and olive groves, none of which seemed to show any significant signs of drought. The huge, portable, watering machines that trundle across the open fields, were everywhere to be seen as well. And yet still no water restrictions.
It’s true that there are many areas of parched grassland, turned yellow from the lack of rain. Fly into Seville or Jerez at this time of year and looking out the window of the plane you won’t see much in the way of green at all. But the right places are still getting the water. The places and the people that need it are getting it.
Contrast that with the UK. There, if there’s no rain for two weeks, the water companies go into meltdown, the hosepipe bans are tossed around like confetti and before you know it, the standpipes are out, there’s panic buying of bottled water in the supermarkets and the army are being drafted in to man the portable water tankers.
Before the downpours of June and July, there were drought orders in force up and down the UK as the population tried to come to terms with the fact it hadn’t rained significantly for at least 14 days!
So what on earth is the problem? How can southern Spain survive restriction-free for months on end, while the UK sputters to a halt after a matter of weeks? What are we doing here that they’re not doing there?
Well, some might think it has something to do with the population. The UK has higher demand because it has about 20 million more people. But it’s not as if the country is a desert. Green fields are everywhere. And, let’s be honest, it’s incredibly unusual for it not to rain in the UK for any significant period of time, while the opposite is true for southern Spain.
Maybe it’s something to do with culture. In southern Spain, people tend to be a little more conservative with water. They don’t really waste it. They turn the tap off when they’re brushing their teeth, they don’t – despite being able to – fill up buckets of water and liberally pour them over their heads. They also don’t have a lot of baths. I’m not saying they’re dirty. They just have showers instead. Quicker, more economical when it comes to water use and frankly a lot cleaner than lying in your own filth in a bath for an hour. It might not come as a surprise to learn that I’ve never been a fan of baths. Give me a shower any time.
In the UK, people are less sparing with their water. To be fair, you can hardly blame them because they know that they’ll be another shower of rain along in a minute. Some years ago a friend of mine, who worked for a water company in the south east of England, told me that more than 70 per cent of water that comes into people’s homes in the UK goes straight back down the plughole the moment it comes out the taps. Think about it.
But the real answer to why we here in southern Spain seem to make our water go further is actually historical. Over several decades in the 20th century Spain embarked on a programme of reservoir and water pipe building right across the country. That meant that when it rained in one place, the water was captured, saved and used efficiently. So it was possible to transport that water to another part of the country where it hadn’t rained.
That’s not to say that there isn’t a shortage of water in the south. There is. We could really do with some rain, especially as the reservoirs in the south are quite low. But other parts of the country are getting rain. In fact, this week has seen some fairly fierce rain storms in the north of the country. In Palencia and Lugo in the last couple of days the heavens opened big time. But frankly, no more than what the UK would probably get in an average summer itself. The difference is that a lot of the rain that fell in the north of Spain will be used in exactly the way it needs to be.
It may have a dodgy economy at the moment, it may have the highest unemployment in the European Union, it may have a desperately weak manufacturing base. But Spain does seem to have got it right when it comes to keeping its population in running water.
The UK, on the other hand, despite the huge quantities of rain that descend from the sky on a regular basis over its green and pleasant land and an infrastructure that would at least suggest an ability to provide adequate water for its citizens, doesn’t appear to have got its act together quite yet.
Fascinating, don’t you think?
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