Barcelona tourists told to forgo golf and shower less as drought strikes

TOURISTS will be forced to scrimp on showers and avoid golf courses under Barcelona’s drought plans

Tourists visiting Barcelona and the Costa Brava are to be told to cut back on showers and avoid golf courses under new rules imposed amid a record drought.

Emergency restrictions due in the next few weeks will mean greater Barcelona’s six million inhabitants will see their daily water consumption limited to 200 litres per person. To put that into perspective, a five-minute shower typically uses between 60 and 70 litres.

The new rules will mean golf clubs will be banned from watering their lawns and hotels will have to limit guest usage.

It follows restrictions already in place that ban filling up private pools and ‘These are weather conditions we expected later in the century but they are here already’ watering gardens, and a campaign to encourage people to use between 100 and 105 litres of water per day.

Barcelona and Costa Brava are supplied by reservoirs in nearby Catalonia. However, since 2020 a drastic reduction in rainfall has left the reservoirs at just 16 per cent capacity, the threshold for which emergency drought measures can be called.

“Unless it rains abundantly in the next few days, the probability is that we will enter an emergency situation before the end of January,” said Catalan regional government spokeswoman Patrícia Plaja.

David Mascort, Catalonia’s climate action minister, said: “These are weather conditions we expected for later in the century due to climate change but they are here already. We have to learn to do the same things with much fewer resources.”