A delegation of the Congress of Local and Regional Authorities composed of co-rapporteurs Jean-Paul Bastin (Belgium, EPP/CCE) and Christian Debève (France, ILDG) carried out a study visit to Spain (Madrid, Sevilla, Malaga) from 18 to 20 December 2023 in the framework of the report “Local and regional responses to major crises” to be debated by the Congress at its session in March 2024.
The aim of the visit was to explore how local and regional authorities perceive, respond and adapt to the dramatic effects of climate change and in what institutional framework they develop their responses. The actual effects of climate change and the solutions sought were explored in several field visits to river Manzanares in Madrid, to Doñana National Park in Andalusia and to innovative projects developed in response to the water shortage in the region, in the surroundings of the municipalities of Arahal.
The delegation learned, amongst others, that droughts and inundations, which regularly took place simultaneously in the same territories on the same day, were the main climate hazards to be responded to in the south of Spain, and that intentional fires, although a regular method of agriculture in the country since centuries, were increasingly getting out of hand in a context of extreme heat in the summer.
Meetings with key stakeholders at local, regional and national levels revealed a very differentiated, cooperative and evidence-based crisis response system, involving all governance levels of the federal state of Spain as well as actions of national and international solidarity.
