Gardeners, both in the public and private sectors, are living with anxiety the current emergency due to the drought, which is causing their activity to plummet. The situation is described as “critical”. They consider that in the end the aid for the ERTEs will be needed and they ask for a modification of the special drought plan to make the total restrictions on irrigation more flexible.
Gardeners have seen orders plummet. Water is a basic resource for gardens; trees need watering and maintenance. The activity is mainly affected because, since they cannot irrigate, they cannot plant or carry out maintenance work, summarizes Miquel Marín, president of the Gardening Guild of Catalonia, which brings together 2,500 companies of different sizes and about 13,000 workers.
All of this causes the hiring to be interrupted. Many citizens who previously considered setting up an irrigation system or completing the garden now give up the idea, bearing in mind that they will not be able to use the water afterwards. No one will make an investment if they know the plants will die.
The garden sector faces with fear the risk of company closures. Invoicing was reduced by 20% in December and the situation has worsened to the point of being critical. The companies are still showing some strength, but it could break in a month and a half. “Approaches are made that involve taking very drastic measures”, says Marín.
The Gardening Guild has asked Treball for help if there is an ERTE and is invoking reasons of force majeure or unforeseen reasons. These grants could be guaranteed for companies, but they also ask that the self-employed be understood.
The professionals complain that they are the only sector to which the use of water has been cut 100%. Since it entered the state of emergency, watering has been completely banned, with a single exception: it is only allowed to water trees that are in public spaces and unique trees (the olive tree in a hotel, for example), but as long as it is regenerated water or from the groundwater. However, this exception does not apply to private gardens, which are the ones that have it the worst. Therefore, they launch an SOS to save them.
The gardeners consider this measure to be discriminatory, since, while the cleaning of streets with groundwater or regenerated water (or even using it in federated sports fields) is authorized as an exception, it is not possible to do the same for saving trees in private spaces. “It is incomprehensible, because trees have the same environmental function, whether they are in a public place or a private place”, he adds. For this reason, they claim that this “discrimination” should not be allowed in the areas of the territory where there is regenerated water.
The Gardening Guild emphasizes that the restrictions have been made in a generic and Solomonic way, without taking into account “that many people have done things well”. For this reason, they consider it incompressible that the use of rainwater is not allowed, both in public and private places, for irrigation, while it is possible to use it to clean streets.
“Many people have made tanks in the garden to collect rainwater or have a place where they have collected ground water. There is a lot of water available that could be used and, before throwing it into the sea, it should all be reused”, he explains.
The gardeners are asking the Government of the Generalitat to take more decisive action to inject regenerated water into the system. “The savings policies are very good, but we need more supply of regenerated water. It is not about regenerating all the water, but all that we can. But there is a lack of political will”, they say.
