Brit holiday warning as Spanish hotspot could run out of WATER after surge in visitors & extreme 33C heat
BRIT holidaymakers have been warned their favourite Spanish hotspot could run out of water following a massive surge in visitors and extreme 33C heat.
Menorca‘s environmental observatory Obsam said residents and tourists needed to reign in their water consumptions after reservoirs were found to be “at a very dangerous limit”.
Maó City deputy mayor Conxa Juanola said rising tourist numbers, an unrelenting drought and soaring temps were a “perfect storm” that turned the island into a “ticking time bomb”.
She said: “The situation that we have found at the end of June used to occur at the end of July or already in August, the alarms have advanced a month or month and a half.”
In Levante and Es Castell, non-essential services have stopped and there’s a review of irrigation in public parks and water flow to sports centres, according to a local report.
Sonia Estradé, a water technician for Obsam, warned that “levels of consumption are at the limit of sustainability”.
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She said aquifers have not been able to recover from the winter and that the region was facing its worst heatwave since the 1980s.
“If we continue to increase consumption we will go under,” she warned.
In Aigües Sant Lluís, officials are blaming a lack of water on second-home owners returning for the summer and deciding to refill their pools and gardens
It comes as Spain and Portugal swelter a new heatwave that has seen large swathes of the two countries bake under 40C-plus heat.
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The mercury in Spain’s southeastern region of Extremedura hit 42C while popular tourist spot Andalusia cooked under 41C, the country’s meteorological agency AEMET said.
In neighbouring Portugal, temps soared to 44C over the weekend, fuelling wildfires and vast smoke clouds visible from the capital in Lisbon.
The heatwave began on Sunday and could last “nine or ten days”, making it one of the longest to hit the Mediterranean country since 1975, said AEMET spokesman Ruben del Campo.
Water reservoirs in Spain stood at 45.3 percent of capacity on Monday, well below the average of 65.7 percent recorded during this period over the past decade.