Spanish farmer Juan Francisco Abellaneda's salads and watermelons fill the shelves of European supermarkets winter and summer. But maybe not for much longer.
The tap that turned the arid semi-desert of southeastern Spain into Europe's market garden may be about to be turned off, threatening the intensive farms that feed much of the continent.
Spain is the European Union's biggest producer of fruit and vegetables and almost half of its exports are grown by farmers like Abellaneda, the crops irrigated by huge transfers of water from the River Tagus hundreds of kilometres to the north.
But with climate change hitting Spain hard, and three-quarters of the country at risk of desertification, the government has decided to limit the flow of the dwindling waters of the Tagus to the southeastern Levante.
The level of the Iberian peninsula's longest river has been dropping dangerously, to the point that in some places it is possible to cross its dried-up bed by foot in summer.
Just like Egypt's shrinking Nile and the Tigris in Iraq, the right to draw on the waters of the Tagus— which crosses into Portugal before flowing into the Atlantic — has become a political hot potato.
The debate is getting even more heated in the run-up to regional elections later this month, with the intensive agriculture that is a pillar of the Spanish economy called into question.
"We need the water (from the Tagus). If they take it from us, it will be nothing but a desert here," said Abellaneda. The 47-year-old cast an anxious eye over the dusty drills of broccoli growing on his 300ha farm near Murcia.
Despite another abnormally hot and dry spring, the farm he and his brothers run is thriving, exporting 3,000 tonnes of fruit and vegetables a year.
"If they do not bring us the water, what are we going to live on?" asked Abellaneda, a founder member of the Deilor cooperative which employs 700 people. He does not want to turn the clock back and fears widespread job losses if they lose water.
"The region is one of the most arid" in Spain, said Domingo Baeza, professor of river ecology at the Autonomous University of Madrid, with not enough water for its intensive agriculture.
To make the bone-dry southeast bloom, Spain began building the gigantic Tagus-Segura Water Transfer project under the dictator General Franco in 1960. It took nearly 20 years to complete its 300km of canals, tunnels, aqueducts and reservoirs, bringing billions of litres of water from the Tagus south into the Segura basin between Murcia and Andalusia.
Once hailed as a model in handling drought, it is now accused of making them worse.
It also made the Levante region — which includes the dry provinces of Murcia, Alicante and Almeria — Europe's biggest horticultural hotspot, employing 100,000 people in businesses turning over €3 billion a year.
But today, "the Tagus is suffering", said Baeza.
"It is degraded in numerous places... because we have far outstripped its capacity (with) uncontrolled expansion of the land it irrigates."
Since the Transfer project was completed, Spain's average temperature has shot up by 1.3°C, according to the Spanish meteorological service.
The flow of the Tagus has dropped 12 per cent over the same period and could plummet by up to 40 per cent by 2050, the Spanish government estimates.
Extreme heatwaves over the last few years, sometimes very early in the year — with temperature records again broken last week — have dried up rivers and reservoirs and have led to water cuts.
"Global warming has changed things," said Julio Barea of Greenpeace. The Transfer "no longer works" for Spain.
"The Tagus needs the water (it is losing to farms in the southeast) to survive," he insisted.
The writer is from the Agence France-Presse news agency
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect those of the New Straits Times