Published19 minutes ago
The smell of barbecued artichokes wafts along a row of dozens of tractors parked in central Barcelona, as rock music blares out of speakers, and wine is poured into plastic cups.
The scene is festive, but this is a protest, not a party. Hundreds of Catalan farmers have driven into their region’s capital to voice their grievances, central to which is the climate.
“We’re now in a situation where we have a full-on drought,” says Xavier Oliva, an artichoke farmer who owns land just outside the city. “If it doesn’t rain you can’t plant anything.”
Oliva and his colleagues are protesting about a range of issues, including what they see as overly tight EU farming regulations. But the most immediate threat to their profession is posed by lack of water, and they are calling for more direct help from the regional government.
In late January, the water level of reservoirs supplying Barcelona and the towns surrounding it in the Ter-Llobregat basin system had dropped on average to below 16% of capacity.
The regional government of Catalonia responded by declaring a state of emergency affecting around six million people. That triggered the introduction of a range of restrictions on water use.
For livestock farmers that means only being allowed to consume half the water they would normally use, and for crop farmers like Mr Oliva, it means reducing water use by 80%.
“We’ll plant 80% less crop than normal, or even less than that,” says Mr Oliva, who is part of
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