Why Spain is turning into a desert

I can't say this enough - don't reforest with eucalyptus unless you're in Australia. Its a plant suited to our landscape and culture - however its also extremely fire prone and can be part of intense fire activity. Spain needs to return to planting its own nature trees for resforestation.

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Being from Portugal I can definitely tell that we are going in the same way. Tropical fruits are being mass farmed in the Algarve, the driest area in Portugal. Every year we have water shortages. In Alentejo, mainly in Odemira region there's thousand's of hectares for industrial farming and greenhouses, which is again, for tropical fruits such avacados and all type of berries. Most of it is exported to northern and Central Europe. Town's are running out of water but this farms and also golf courses are always green. Another aspect of this is illegal immigration and slavery due to the need for cheap labor. I personally met s group of nepalis that weren't paid for 4 months. Something that I should add to this is that, in the latest summers Portugal's rivers that crossed the border were significant drier, since was alleged that the Spanish government would kept more water in their dams.

Spain is the Orchard of Europe, Ukraine is the Breadbasket .

As a barren wasteland myself, Spain's issue really speaks to me

In Portugal the situation is not as dire not because it is less agricultural but because it rains substantially more!

as an Australian who’s job is to plant native trees, DONT PLANT EUCALYPTUS TREES. sure there drought and fire resistant, but at what cost. they’ve evolved to burn and these fires can be intense without regular burns and proper land management (look up black summer of 2019 for an example). also they’re incredibly fast growing and invasive to non native areas. they also drop large branches unpredictably making them dangerous. Don’t plant these outside of Australia.

Great video overall, however I'd like to point out a couple of things: First, deforestation during the 15th and 16th centuries was driven by agricultural expansion rather than shipbuilding. Galleon construction required indeed a lot of wood but it also required that supply to be sustainable during a long time (as fleets had to be replenished, repaired, upgraded and expanded). Spanish shipbuilders knew this and relied on silviculture rather than mindlessly clearing forests for logging, overexplotaition of forests was rare. Also, only minor and auxiliary vessels were actually built in Spain using spanish wood, most of the larger warships were built in the Caribbean using native resources. This coincided in time with a growth on spanish population and a significant expansion of agriculture. Most forests were cleared so the land could be used for crop production or cattle grazing. Second, "reforestation" during Franco's dictatorship is a more complicated topic than it appears in the video. Non-native species of trees were introduced for either pulp and paper production (mainly on the mediteranean coast), or to create "dehesas" for recreational use or cattle grazing (mainly in the interior of the peninsula). Main problem is the species used (besides having no ecological continuity) consume much higher amounts of water than native trees, leading to dessecation and soil degradation. This causes the local ecosystems to degrade and destabilize (often to the point of collapse) and sets up the perfect conditions for catastrophic wildfires. Species used for pulp and paper production have the added problem that they act as "fuel" as they're highly flammable, which facilitates ignition and spread of fires.

"We do not inherit the earth from our ancestors; we borrow it from our children" You guys are always cooking with the hard hitting quotes

While the main theme of this video is correct (the looming water crisis in Spain, and environmental impact of intensive fruit and vegetable cultivation), it is misleading to describe Spain as "the bread basket of Europe". Its wheat production is modest (4 - 8.5m tonnes/year) compared to France (30-40m), Ukraine (16-32m), Germany (20-28m), Turkey (17-22m), UK (10-17m) and Poland (9-12.5m). Spain is better described as the fruit and salad bowl of Europe. Portugal is also greener as it benefits from prevailing westerly winds off the Atlantic. BTW - is it wise to promote investing in art?

"Spain needs to start seeing things from an environmental perspective, not just a financial one"...we all do, buddy, we all do.

Here in Bulgaria (which is at the same latitude as northern Spain) we are facing similar problems. In the last 20 years snowfall has decreased at an alarming rate. This is a big problem not only for agriculture but also for the supply of drinking water. Forestfires occur more and more often.

Spain as the breadbasket of Europe? I hear that for the first time in my life.

Awesome coverage from Caspian Report! As a Spaniard myself I can add that this has been happening for centuries but the latest 2 years have been very concerning for the lack of rainfall. We're having a major shortage of olive oil due to very bad crops for two years for this very reason. Thanks, Shirvan!

Im from Northern Spain, so usually water issues sound a bit "foreign" in a way. but even here we see less rain now. Still rains a lot, but not as much as it used to be. When I went to school 20 years ago, we got -10ºC degrees in february (Now you are lucky if it gets to 5ºC) and November used to be rain for the whole month. Its october, almost november and I have been going to the beach!! with just 1 weak of rain this october, most days have been sunny and mild... which is insane.

As someone who has studied soil agricultural ecosystems during my masters, this is pretty accurate! All the recommendations from the end of the video are things that countries all over the world should be adopting. Soil fertility has rapidly declined in the last few decades and the current agricultural practices in many countries are wildly unsustainable. It is a shame that the value of healthy soils is almost never expressed monetarily, so they are often degraded for short term profits. In the long term, healthy soils are invaluable.

The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plains.

Who would’ve thought that Spain and Burkina Faso would ever be experiencing the same problem

Sounds less like Spain is turning into a desert, and more like Spain adopted an unsustainable USA or specifically a California based agricultural model of intensive, irrigated farm production of crops that don't belong in an already arid environment, and require infrastructure to exist. When something fails, like precipitation in dry years, it becomes obvious how fragile that model is. California has had many dry years for a while, and then 1 extremely wet winter 2022/2023 floods everything and gives a false impression that it can be business as usual, or that it has returned to a wet landscape. In reality, it was always a land with high variability in precipitation, and never a place that should have been built in to a major supplier of agricultural crops.

It's really wonderful to come across people who freely share valuable information online. You never know what kind of knowledge you might stumble upon that could have a lasting impact on your life.