
Spain: Water Scarcity in a Vacation Paradise
Record heat and drought in 2023 push Spain's water crisis into the open, and this DW film tracks the fallout across two regions living it differently. Catalonia introduces some of Europe's strictest water-saving rules that April, rationing supplies for households while reservoirs drop to a fraction of capacity. In Andalusia, farmers explain how shrinking allocations threaten crops that depend on irrigation, and interviews with growers, officials, and residents lay out who gets priority when there is not enough to go around. The film also turns to the tourism industry, still one of Spain's biggest earners, and asks what happens when hotels, pools, and golf courses compete with local families for the same dwindling supply. Vacationers are shown weighing whether shorter showers and smaller gestures make any real difference against industrial-scale demand. Rather than settling on a villain, the documentary lays out the competing claims on Spain's water, from agriculture to hospitality to daily household use, and leaves the question of fair distribution open as reservoirs keep falling.