The prolonged drought that, despite the rains last weekend, the Mediterranean coast is experiencing, and in particular the eastern half of Catalonia, has very few precedents. But it has them, even though to find them you have to go back 200 years, when three consecutive dry periods – each one like the current one – caused one of the biggest water crises on record and, of course, the most important before today. The lack of rain, which began in 1815, lasted until 1827 with especially pressing peaks such as that of 1817, known by the eloquent name of lo any de la fam. The consequences of that episode were felt for decades in very broad aspects of Catalan society, politics and economy.
The researcher specialized in climate history Mariano Barriendos argues that the current situation is very serious but, taking as a reference a broad time frame in the context of the Mediterranean climate, it is not exceptional. From this point of view, the series of rainfall data that he manages indicate that drought periods in Catalonia have historically been numerous, although there is little memory in this regard because that trend had a parenthesis in the 20th century. To find a crisis as serious or more serious than the current one, we must refer to the one at the beginning of the 19th century.
“On that occasion there were three episodes of approximately three years each,” explains Barriendos, “separated by small periods of rainfall that seemed to approach a certain normality. Technically it is what English speakers call megadrought.” The beginning of this period coincides with the eruption of the Tambora volcano (1815-16) in Indonesia, which caused a global climate anomaly with a sharp drop in temperatures.
The first direct consequence was the decrease in rainfall, which in an agricultural system technologically very far from the current one, translated into poor harvests, shortages and hunger. Europe at that time, in the midst of the post-Napoleonic War, was recovering from the effects of violence and the destruction of the productive system. On the Peninsula, long years of war had destroyed crop fields and basic infrastructure and had reduced the workforce.
The lack of grain increased prices because the cereal had to be imported from other markets already stressed by the global alteration of the climate. Not only that, although it was the countryside where the effect of the drought was most directly felt, in cities like Lleida, Girona and Barcelona the authorities were desperately looking for alternatives in the face of a very complicated situation. In the capital, the Rec Comtal, whose course moved the flour mills, lowered its level so much that it left them useless. It was necessary to look for alternative and more expensive systems, such as installing portable mills powered by animals or humans, explains Carles Moruno, researcher at the Rovira i Virgili University.
Moruno believes that, at a time when, after the French War, the restored absolutist regime was trying to establish itself, the deterioration of the economic situation and public health caused by the drought had a direct impact on the political situation. “The monarchy was perfectly aware of the seriousness of the situation and, despite the critical circumstances in which public finances found themselves, undertook works to improve the distribution of scarce water resources,” he points out. But, despite everything, it was difficult to compensate for the lack of rain (in 1817 in Barcelona it rained a third of the usual amount), to provide stability to a regime that was trying to recover the outdated foundations of the 18th century, to resolve the famine and to alleviate the economic crisis. “It was a perfect storm that year,” he says. A dry storm, yes.
The conjunction of these elements fueled an instability throughout the Peninsula that would have been expressed, as he points out, with the pronouncement that gave rise to the beginning of the Liberal Triennium (1820-1823), which in turn was followed by a new absolutist restoration (1823 -1833). And at the end of the journey, the first Carlist war (1833-1840).
Aside from the political effects of the drought 200 years ago, the shock waves were felt in the following decades in other fields. The researchers do not establish a mathematical cause-effect relationship between the lack of rain and the yellow fever epidemic that hit Barcelona in 1821, but they do specify that a population weakened by poor nutrition and subjected to unsanitary conditions was especially vulnerable to this disease. The result was that between 6% and 15% of a census of just over 100,000 Barcelona residents died as a result of the plague.
The memory of that epidemic and other subsequent ones, such as the cholera epidemic of 1834, made the urban elites aware of the need to alleviate the overcrowding of the population that was concentrated in its walled enclosure. Politics was added to the demand in terms of public health, which would end up forcing the removal of the walls in the middle of the century. And also to economic interest. Barrendas points out that “the incipient industrial bourgeoisie was the first interested in improving the health of Barcelona and opening the city because, after all, they preferred to have a healthy workforce than sick workers.”
Obviously, the researchers warn, although the drought of today and that of then bear certain similarities, they are very different because the economic, social, demographic and technological structure is also very different. What, however, does constitute a common point, points out Mariano Barriendos, is that in both cases it is observed how society seeks solutions to adapt to problems. In any case, the two situations show that droughts, like other long-term climate phenomena, have a deep and lasting impact that goes far beyond the strictly meteorological impact.