MADRID (Reuters) – A Spanish government led by the People’s Party (PP) would invest 44 billion euros ($47.86 billion) over six years on water infrastructure, its leader Alberto Nunez Feijoo said on Friday.
The PP, which is leading polls ahead of a July 23 election, has pledged to introduce a national water plan and will create a national water board to oversee water infrastructure development.
Water management has become a hot topic in the campaign as farmers and other industries vie for an increasingly scarce resource as climate change generates hotter summers and drier winters.
“The people are asking for water,” Feijoo said in a speech at an economic forum in Seville. “The priority in infrastructure in Spain will be water infrastructure.”
Feijoo was speaking in the southern region of Andalusia, one of the worst affected by a prolonged drought and where the regional PP government has locked horns with the Socialist-led national government and the European Commission over whether to legalise irrigation for berry growers near the Donana wetlands, an important sanctuary for migratory birds.
($1 = 0.9193 euros)
(Reporting by Charlie Devereux; editing by Jason Neely)
