More evidence of rickety Spain

Open Europe notes a report in El País that the European Commission has urged Spain to make more use of desalination plants across the country, after Spanish Agriculture Minister Miguel Arias Cañete told MPs that, on average, the plants are only working at 16% of their capacity.

The Commission pointed out that Spain received around €1.5bn of EU subsidies to build the plants.

They expressed the hope that the Spanish government would ensure the best use of this infrastructure paid for by European funds. Otherwise this "could have a significant negative impact on the availability of European funds to Spain".

Spanish Local government again

Some municipalities signed agreements to use desalinated water because it would be essential to allow massive urban developments to go ahead in arid areas during the housing bubble. Now, thousands of dwellings have been built ... and the municipalities do not want to pay the bill. The water is more expensive than other sources of supply, and if some of the houses it was going to supply have not been built thanks to the economic downturn (and there's no sign that they will be any time soon), local government won't want to pay the bills.

Meanwhile, the Commission claims that "climate change will reduce water availability in the coming decades" - the last resort of a scoundrel seeking to persuade governments to do things which otherwise don't make sense:

The use of cheap water at the expense of the environment must end.

A southern EU country takes money from other EU taxpayers and then doesn't use it properly.

Where have we heard that before?