Spain is currently considered to be a powerhouse in the agricultural sector, with very important productions and exports in the fruit and vegetable sector. One hundred percent coming from the almost four million hectares that we have under irrigation, and which generate more than 60 percent of our final agricultural production.
We have overcome many of the difficulties of being a country with little rainfall, which since the time of the Romans has needed reservoirs to irrigate. And during the centuries of Arab presence, the culture of the garden, of maximum use of the liquid element, spread throughout the Levant and Andalusia. Even leading to the creation of a Water Court, a unique institution to judge on its fairest distribution.
At the end of the 19th century, a whole current of regenerationist politicians, starting with Joaquín Costa, advocated the need for a true hydraulic policy, which has been developing. With the impressive result of increases in production and exports that place Spain in first place in Europe in fruit and vegetable crops, even surpassing Italy.
Thus, today we can emphasize that in 2026 it will be a century since the birth of the Hydrographic Confederations (CH), created during the Dictatorship of Primo de Rivera, in 1926. More specifically, using the initiative of the engineer of roads, canals and ports Don Manuel Lorenzo Pardo, who was in charge of integrating agrarian affairs in the Ebro basin. So the Minister of Public Works of the dictator Primo de Rivera, Rafael Benjumea (Count of Guadalhorce) extended this model to all of Spain, with the creation of Confederations for the complete basins of the fifteen most important rivers: Duero, Tajo, Guadiana, Guadalquivir, etc.
One hundred years later (CH-100), the Confederations, with their lights and shadows, and improving in many aspects, could be protagonists of a new Spanish agrarian impulse for the future.