Iberian Peninsula's Longest River Might Dry Completely

Tagus River, the longest one in the Iberian Peninsula at 1,007 kilometres, is in danger of drying up completely.

Miguel Ángel Sánchez, spokesperson of the Platform in Defence of the Tagus, says “the river has collapsed through a combination of climate change, water transfer and the waste Madrid produces.”

The river, which helped civilizations to flourish in the Peninsula, starts in Aragon in Northern Spain, passes near Madrid and meets the sea in Lisbon. Although millions of lives depend on Tagus, it is dammed no fewer than 51 times in Spain alone.

Spain experiences cyclical droughts such as the ongoing drought of 2017, which weren’t taken into consideration whilst building these dams or diverting the river for agricultural purposes.

According to the environmental lawyer María Soledad Gallego, the Tagus River “isn’t just a water resource, it has a cultural, social, historic and aesthetic value.”

“We need to face reality and deal with the environmental implications,” says Gallego. “In the south-east agriculture is subsidized in the form of water transfers. They depend on there being a water surplus in other parts of the country and so they are always going to have problems. They need to live with the reality of what the Segura and Tajo basins can provide.”