Case Study 1: Matarraña River Basin - Euwareness

asin. This situation seems to result mainly from two types of situations.
On the one hand, some small vegetable crops, mainly located in the higher river basin,
were progressively reconverted into animal farms a couple of decades ago. Nowadays,
around 60% of the total income in the higher basin come from cattle. Cattle demands
much lower quantities of water and is economically more profitable than traditional
agriculture. Some of these users say they applied for a concession to the CHE around
15 years ago, but the CHE is said to have rejected these applications by saying that
water uses have changed. However, the CHE seems to informally accept these uses.
On the other hand, along the seventies the extension of cultivated lands in the
Matarraña river basin increased in about 1,000 Has more, partly because the CHE had
built a tunnel to divert water and because of the profits of peach crops (some users had
a concession and some others did not). In spite of that, the CHE did not give
concessions for the irrigation to the whole of the new 1,000 Has, as either the Pena
water dam and the tunnel supposedly covered most of the existing irrigation
necessities. To this respect, the Central Union gave a kind of “permit” to use water to
the irrigation communities with plots having no concession, that is, to illegal users.
According to this, all irrigation communities that have applied for the use of water for
irrigation and cattle but having no concession can take the remaining waters from the
Matarraña river from October to March as far as this does not cause trouble to the
irrigation communities having a concession. While the CHE is most likely to be aware
of the existence of illegal users, it leaves water distribution and organisation in the
hands of the Central Union.
In both types of situation, water is used illegally as these users do not have legal
concessions. Illegal uses of water include abusing uses, for instance, the storage of
water in illegal pools, the starting of illegal engines to water lands at night, and so on.
However, beyond those ‘hidden’ uses, users with no concessions are tolerated by their
corresponding irrigation communities as far as they do not damage their interests. This
is shown by the fact that illegal users pay for the use of water to their corresponding
irrigation communities. This is a kind of trade-off for illegal users for being allowed to
irrigate, even though they do so in worse conditions than the users holding a
concession. This means that illegal users have a kind of de facto use right in practice
that to some extent is accepted by all irrigation communities (all irrigation communities
are said to have illegal users).
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