Toledo (EFE)
In the case of the Supreme Court, the judgment of the Administrative Litigation Chamber (Fifth Section), to which EFE has had access, dismisses an appeal filed in October 2021 against the Royal Decree of July of that same year that approved several transfer regulations.
Specifically, the rules for the exploitation of the Tagus-Segura Transfer were established, determining the levels of the limits of the joint stocks of the Entrepeñas and Buendía reservoirs, based on the maximum annual levels and each monthly payment.
It was alleged that the basin plans were being reformed
One of the appealed aspects was the lack of timeliness of the reform as the approval of the new basin management plans was in process -at that time- but the Basin Plans were published in the BOE of February 10, 2023, therefore nor when the appeal was deliberated were they approved.
In addition, the Plan must respect the basic conditions of the Transfer that are already established by regulations of legal rank, which implies that its incidence on the conditions of the Transfer can only be affected “tangentially” and not for the limitation of water transferable, according to this ruling, dated February 21, 2023.
Regarding the ruling of the Contentious-Administrative Chamber of the National Court (First Section) dated February 3, 2023, it is the recourse of the Region of Murcia to the ministerial order of November 21, 2019 that authorized a transfer of 7.5 cubic hectometres from the headwater reservoirs of the Tagus when the request was for a transfer of 14.7 hectometres.
The legal services of the autonomous community of Catilla-La Mancha have acted in both appeals and the costs have been imposed on the appellants.
García-Page celebrates the sentences
The President of Castilla-La Mancha, Emiliano García-Page, has celebrated these latest rulings which, as he has highlighted, “make it very clear that we have the right to water” and that the rules for operating the Tajo-Segura transfer are “unfair”.
In this sense, it has announced that it is going to demand that the Government of Spain not exhaust the one-year period that exists to change the rules of exploitation of the transfer and “be as early as possible”.
“Today we can celebrate that this region is “winning sentence after sentence and winning the water”, said García-Page, who recalled that in Castilla-La Mancha there were four years -those that the PP governed- in which “it was not Nothing appealed and Levante was right ”.
The regional president has recognized that it “humiliates him that instead of the water being given to us by the technicians of the Confederation, a judge has to give it to us.”
“It bothers me to have to go to the Supreme Court to ask for water, it’s almost humiliating. But finally, we have the water” and these two sentences “support us”, he affirmed, at the same time that he has said that it is also important not to lower our guard.
