'Looking to the sky': the only hope left for Malaga's farmers as drought crisis hits them hard

The two agreed irrigation periods for the local farmers have already come to an end when in some areas the water did not even arrive once the first emergency irrigation started. The first was from 12 June to 14 July and the second from 5 August until the water ran out. In an ordinary year they have a total of 40 hectometres at their disposal.

At the end of July, Rafael Vega, a farmer from Cártama, still had not received a drop of water, as the breakdowns in the water network in the area are another of the main difficulties in irrigation in the Guadalhorce. "We have been saying for more than two decades that there are some black spots in the region that fail every year and we always pay a fee that is not used to fix the problem", said sources close to the board of the provincial association of irrigators of Malaga (Aprema).

The association itself recalls that as soon as the first irrigation period started, the Cártama syphon system broke down, so there are irrigators who started the first irrigation period on 1 August, just days before the second established irrigation.

"The second irrigation has gone better but it has been hard work, organising ourselves as best we can, distributing the water when everyone needs it and cutting it by zones to obtain a more concentrated quantity", explained the president of the Arroyo Gragea irrigation community, Agustín García.

Aprema has already warned on numerous occasions that with this situation they are going to lose farms, work and many crops, as "now that there is no more water for irrigation, there is nothing left to do but look to the sky and hope for rain, when just ten kilometres away from the Guadalhorce, investment continues in other sectors such as tourism".

President of the Doñana Las Monjas and Las Cabrerizas irrigation communities, Cristóbal Sánchez, explained how there are many farming families who are facing ruin. The two communities have a combined total of 600 growers and are going to experience losses of almost three million kilos of citrus fruit, according to Sánchez's estimates. Faced with this situation, the irrigators are calling for an agreement to "not let agriculture in the Guadalhorce die".