Spain, Portugal struggle with extreme drought
SPAIN and Portugal are grappling with a devastating drought which has left rivers nearly dry, sparked deadly wildfires and devastated crops — and experts warn that prolonged dry spells will become more frequent.
The national weather office says 94% of Portugal is enduring what it classifies as an “extreme” drought.
“The country has never experienced a drought like this in the sense that it worsened significantly in October, a time of the year when the situation normally improves,” a climatologist with the weather office, Fatima Espirito Santo, told AFP.
Two-thirds of Spain has received considerably less rain during the last three years than it normally does.
“It’s a ruinous situation,” said Jose Ramon Gonzalez, a small rancher in Spain’s normally rainy northwestern region of Galicia.
Due to the scarcity of grass, Gonzalez was forced to spend thousands of euros to buy fodder for his cattle in July, four months earlier than normal.
“There are rivers, springs, which neither I, at the age of 45, nor my parents, nor my grandparents, have seen dry which have dried up,” he said.
About 1.38 million hectares (3.4 million acres) of grains, sunflowers and olive trees have been affected by drought or frost in Spain as of the end of October, according to Spanish farming insurance agency Agroseguro.
It has dished out more than €200 million ($236 million) in compensation this year.
“You feel helpless like when you are sick, you can’t do anything. This sickness is called drought,” said Vicente Ortiz, a farmer and rancher in Spain’s central Castilla-La Mancha region, whose endless plain is depicted in Don Quixote, the famous work by Miguel de Cervantes.
Ortiz said his grain harvest has plunged 70% from last year and he expects to harvest half as many olives.
The situation is just as dire for farmers across the border in neighboring Portugal.
“All crops are suffering from this lack of water in our region, from olives to grains and grapes,” said Fremelinda Carvalho, the president of the association of farmers on Portalegre in central Portugal.
The dry fields and forests have fuelled wildfires, which killed 109 people this year in Portugal and five in Galicia, many dying in their cars as they tried to flee the flames.
WATER CONFLICTS
Water reservoirs are at abnormally low levels.
In Portugal 28 of the country’s water reservoirs in October were at less than 40% of their storage capacity.
This weekend about a hundred fire trucks began transporting water from one dam in northern Portugal to another that is running dry and supplies water to Viseu, a city of around 100,000 residents.
In Spain the water reservoirs along the Tagus River, which empty into the Atlantic near Lisbon, were as of Monday at just 39.3% of their capacity. —