Cape Town’s claim to be the first city in the world that almost ran out of water was typical SA exceptionalism. In 2008 Spain’s second city, Barcelona, was importing water by ship to cope with its supply crisis. And droughts don’t go away. In May, the dry reservoirs of the Catalonia region looked like Theewaterskloof on a bad day in 2018. In spring, they should be full, but the system that supplies Barcelona and other users was down to 27%.
Three ministers from the national coalition government competed with each other on TV news to promise help to drought-stricken farmers. Perhaps that’s why Europe uses dubious phytosanitary concerns to block our citrus exports. With European environmental agencies threatening to interdict their vegetable exports — to stop overuse of groundwater — Spain’s farmers need all the help they can get.
Spain’s government worries about water problems in Catalonia because, as in the Western Cape, there are ongoing calls for secession. Regionalism is formal policy. Fluency in Catalan, the region’s official language, is a public service requirement. Yet about 40% of Catalonia’s people still want independence. Many Kapenaars would feel right at home
Coalition governments are another Spanish bugbear. Barcelona’s water crisis resulted from an unexpected election result in 2004. The incumbent national government was, deservedly, ejected after blaming Spanish Basques (another community with secessionist leanings) for a terrorist train bombing while knowing that it was Al-Qaeda’s retaliation for Spain’s involvement in the Iraq war.
Unfortunately for Barcelona, the new coalition government included a green party, which was mandated to stop the city’s new water developments — as was tried in Cape Town. But in Spain, coalition agreements are binding, and the city was left high and dry.
But the deeper parallels with Spain are the challenges posed by our dark pasts.
SA’s four decades of brutal, divisive and exploitive minority dictatorship left millions of people poor, with few opportunities. Spain’s ruthless dictator Gen Francisco Franco ruled for almost four decades after overthrowing the democratic government in 1938 with military support from Nazi Germany and fascist Italy. As he took power, thousands of his opponents were murdered, hundreds of thousands simply fled the country.
European democracies initially shunned Spain’s bloody dictatorship but, as the Cold War with Russia intensified, economic links were re-established, with the US’s encouragement. When Franco died and democracy was restored in 1976, the expanding EU admitted Spain (after a 10-year probation). Spain’s economy benefited mightily from access to European markets for its agriculture and engineering industries and generous funding to help poorer members “level up”. Sun-seeking tourists from northern Europe provided further impetus to growth.
While SA also enjoyed a post-apartheid boost, we do not have friendly, rich neighbours offering support and opportunity. Membership of the Southern African Development Community (Sadc) and the AU opens some doors, but not the benefits that Spain enjoys from Europe. Rather, our neighbours view us as rich relations, despite our challenges of poverty, inequality and distorted development.
Originally an agricultural society, Spain had a history of industrial development in Catalonia and the Basque country. Its ships took 16th-century colonists to Latin America and fought the British. By the 19th century, its industries had found outlets in Europe and colonial markets. Spanish companies are now important players in global markets for renewable energy and transport.
SA’s industry grew to serve the mines, much of whose wealth was enjoyed elsewhere. Now, domestic mining offers limited opportunities, and resources such as coal are becoming a liability not an asset. Other industries, promoted to ensure self-sufficiency against anti-apartheid sanctions, struggled to remain competitive after 1994. There are few dramatic new economic opportunities on the horizon and many threats.
The decline of Spain’s coal mining industry preceded ours. Its coal miners played a leading role in the country’s 20th-century politics. But while mineworkers’ militancy achieved improved conditions, it also sparked political divisions within the Republican government that helped Franco’s rebels to power. Today, Catalonia’s Cerc coal mine is a tourist centre with restaurant, hotel and holiday homes; its coal museum includes replicas of migrant workers’ cramped living quarters.
Spain took four decades to acknowledge and address its dark history. The bodies of Franco’s victims are still being unearthed from mass graves and reinterred. Franco’s remains were moved from a monument outside Madrid to a less prominent location and the site is being repurposed as a memorial to all the victims of the civil war.
Acknowledgment of the civil war has gone beyond emblematic sites such Guernica, the town destroyed by Nazi bombers in 1937 to experiment with air raids against civilian targets. Remarkably, plaques on roadsides commemorating civil war sites are not defaced; the society’s conflicts now focus on Barcelona and Madrid’s football stadiums.
So SA is not alone in struggling to rebuild a society after decades of brutal and divisive rule. Others have gone through similar trauma and, while the details may differ, we should learn from their successes and failures.
Spain was able to join a rich, supportive community of nations that, thanks to imperial exploitation, had the wealth to build relatively stable and equitable societies. There are no such easy options for SA with our limited resources and structural inequality, a poisonous legacy aggravated by two generations of under-education. Like Spain, we have distinct regional communities that want their separate identities recognised and respected. But racial and ethnic divisions, which mirror historical economic disparities, pose serious political challenges.
A politics of identity encourages the politics of coalitions and Spain’s experiences — coalition instability, drought emergencies, the transition from coal — begs the question: can we do better?
• Mike Muller is a visiting adjunct professor at the Wits School of Governance with interests in water and development.
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