'We have nothing to keep the sea out': the struggle to save Spain's Ebro Delta
By Stephen Burgen
A month after Storm Gloria battered the east coast of Spain, the extent of the devastation to the Ebro Delta is only now becoming clear. Those whose livelihoods depend on the region are demanding solutions amid fears that rising seas will further threaten the fragile ecosystems of the Mediterranean’s most important wetland.
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While Gloria represents the sharp end of the threat from the climate crisis, for decades the delta’s fragile ecology has suffered from a combination of political neglect and over-exploitation of the river. The Ebro, which gave Iberia its name, is the only major Spanish river that flows into the Mediterranean. Its waters are much in demand for irrigation and hydro-electricity and there are 181 dams along its 930km course from Cantabria to the sea.
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One effect of all those dams is to drastically reduce the amount of sediment that reaches the delta. The sediment is an essential element of the local ecology and also protects the shoreline from erosion. In some areas the shoreline is receding by more than five metres a year.
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Marta Subirà, the Catalan government environment minister, believes the political challenge is almost as great as the environmental one. “The European, Spanish and the Catalan governments haven’t always been on the same page in how to deal with this,” she says.
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