The controversy over the opening of private swimming pools in emergency areas continues. The Catalan Association of Municipalities (ACM) and the Federation of Municipalities of Catalonia (FMC) have denied and rejected the words of Minister David Mascort with which he has been reiterating that the Government had agreed with these entities on the decree law on public swimming pools and private. This decree, approved by the Government last Tuesday, leaves the decision of opening private swimming pools (hotels, campsites and communities of owners) in the hands of city councils if they declare them a climate refuge and open them to the general public. The text must still be validated in the permanent commission of the Parlamanet.

The councilor declared on Saturday in RAC1 that the text of the decree had been agreed upon until the “last comma.” However, the entities contradict him.

They reply that they worked on a technical document focused on the request to reduce sanctions for municipalities (for excessive water consumption), but “the regulation of private pools as climate refuge is not something we have proposed.”

The municipal entities specify that their work has been aimed at ensuring that public pools are considered climate refuges (and could open), but their intention was not to open the door to legitimizing the use of private ones.

“We are concerned that at the threshold of summer the Government is not clear about the measures that must be adopted to face the serious drought situation that a good part of the country is suffering while transferring the responsibility to us. We ask the Government not to centrifuge responsibilities,” they say.

The objective of the town councils was, they add, that municipalities that do not have public swimming pools be helped to find “viable solutions.”

The controversy arose in the search for a solution so that municipalities in areas in emergency situations due to drought could open their local municipal swimming pools this summer, something that until now has been prohibited.

The town councils only wanted municipal swimming pools, some private club pools (that host summer camps, for example…), to be classified as climate shelters, or that in towns where there was no municipal pool but there was a community pool, it could be given to This is a public use.

The municipal entities negotiated this issue, but the final wording of the decree law approved by the Government on Tuesday has generated great confusion. The introduced text indicates that private pools in which public use is made (for example, hotels in community areas or urbanizations) must have “identical price conditions as public pools.”

That expression raised alarm bells in municipal entities.

And, in the same way, the story introduced by the explanations given by the Government is rejected, in which it is repeated that it is the city councils that can declare private swimming pools as climate shelters, something that the municipal entities have interpreted as a way of transferring them a hot potato.

The Government spokesperson, Patrícia Plaja, invoked on Tuesday the autonomy of the municipalities to define their public or private shelters as they are the ones who best know the situation in each case.

The Government also reported that the municipalities should change the local drought plan to introduce these shelters and modify, where appropriate, the municipal ordinances to regulate all the extremes regarding the opening of private pools (in terms of security, rescue, insurance, capacity, schedules and so on…).

After the controversy unleashed, the Minister David Mascort has specified that the decree on climate shelters has not been drafted with the intention or with the intention that tourist establishments (hotels, campsites) or even communities of owners can open their doors. with municipal permission. And he has reiterated that the intention was simply to give “the opportunity for that municipality that does not have a municipal pool but has private equipment to use it as a climate shelter.”

And it does not foresee that city councils endorse the opening of private swimming pools. “It would seem strange to me; I doubt there is a city council that does something like this,” said Mascort.

However, the Federation of Municipalities maintains that the Government has fed a story that suggests that it is the city councils that define which private pools can open and which cannot.

Eduard Rivas, its president, has been reiterating that the Generalitat should in any case establish a differentiated and clear regime for swimming pools related to economic activities themselves, such as hotels or campsites; and not cede that function to the town councils because they understand that it is not their responsibility to do so.