But while Garriga and other Catalans have been suffering water shortages in recent years, there’s one group of people that appears to be immune, and even profits from them: the multinational companies extracting millions of litres of water from the very same land. This isn’t just a Spanish issue – across the world, from Uruguay to Mexico, Canada to the UK, many have begun to question whether private corporations should be allowed to siphon off a vital public resource, then sell it back to citizens as bottled water.
The tragedy in Spain makes the country one of the canaries in the coalmine when it comes to understanding the global threat to water security. Can the growing number of angry citizens surrounded by private water plants but left without safe water in their homes force a rethink of how this resource is managed? And as weather patterns change, should private companies continue to have easy access to vital reserves of underground water?
Of course, but even though it’s considered perfectly safe to drink, the tap water in Catalonia and many other places in Spain is disgusting tasting if you don’t filter it and most people don’t even try, they just lug the 5l bottles every other day from the shops.
It’s a failure at many levels to be honest and nobody in power does anything about it.
No offense but I had the displeasure to taste spanish water (bottled) and it is not good at all. It’s oily, greasy. Just plain foul.
And if the distribution water is not good, then it is not being properly treated.
I agree, on both accounts. This is why I filter mine, but I am a super tiny minority. Everyone else just chugs plastic all day.
Bullshit. Spanish bottled water is spring water, not filtered water. It is not oily, period. Give us lab data, proof. All bottled water must pass testing by independent labs. Water in coastal areas is often not great tasting, but 100% safe. This is because many networks are centuries old, and can have infiltration from seawater, but it’s all 100% human safe. You’ll find a ton of areas in Belgium, Germany, and the Netherlands where tap water doesn’t taste great. Water in Madrid, and other non coastal areas, for example is so good, it’s often said it could be bottled and sold.
As for treatment, it’s properly treated, it’s not like in the US where you can get amoeba from tap water, or have flammable tap water!
If I was not clear enough, I was mentioning how it tasted to me; I was not claiming it actually had oil or grease in it, which are contaminants and should never be present in water, even less if bottled, which was the case.
by coincidence, I actually have some knowledge on the matter because I work in water distribution, and the only off taste water should carry is from excess chlorination for desinfecting repaired ruptured lines. Apart from that, all the processes used to treat water for consumption remove off tastes.
I just visited a water treatment plant this week, that captures water from an artificial lake - water in the open air, where fish and birds live, animals go to drink and human recreation occurs, etc - that after undergoing several stages and processes of treatment carries no unpleasant aftertaste.
And I lived for decades near the coastline and never having saltwater contamination in the distribution lines was a concern. And the gross majority of said water was and still is captured directly from Tejo and is often filthy coming into the treatment plant.
By contrast, I can easily find a bottled water with off taste - for my own personal liking - because said waters don’t undergo any treatment. As you said: bottled water is usually spring water, captured from underground reservoirs. But every water has an organoleptic profile from the place it is stored in nature.