Feature: Spain's Ebro Transfer - a major turnaround

Huge and immensely dangerous...

(Author: Saren Starbridge)

The situation called for dramatic and determined action, and that's what it got. For three years, thousands of people - up to half a million in Madrid; 300,000 in Barcelona and Zaragoza - gathered at massive demonstrations.

A thousand people joined a candlelit procession in Tortosa and every day for two months, from 9.00am to 7.00pm, people chained themselves up outside the Catalan Government's Delegation in Tortosa in protest. Public meetings, leaflets, graffiti, concerts, fiestas, giant flamingo puppets, motorcycle and bicycle rides, a massive letter-writing campaign, even a paella competition - anything that might work was pressed into use, to raise local awareness and action against the national government's cavalier water grab.

'I have always had an interest in environmental and social issues,' explains English teacher Brian Cutts, 'but I had never been involved in anything so incredible before.' Since 1988, Cutts has lived and worked in Tortosa on the edge of the Ebro delta. Capital of the Lower Ebro province, an area directly affected by the proposed transfer, Tortosa is a hot-bed of activists, including Cutts and his wife.

'People here have done things which no one could have imagined three years ago,' says Cutts. 'Three hundred thousand people protesting in favour of a river! Fifteen thousand people travelling to Brussels to demonstrate in favour of EU legislation – and against their country receiving EU funds! I cannot describe in words the feeling this campaign has generated. More water has flowed in tears of joy and emotions than would ever be taken from the river.'