Spain’s water sector tells a more complicated story than the idea of a single, competitive market suggests. Expert interviews and detailed sector analysis reveal a system where prices inconsistently reflect scarcity, incentives vary across regions, and investment signals are often weakened by subsidies, regulations, and political pressures.
In this landscape, performance is not defined by utilities or tariffs alone, but by how institutions, policies, and societal priorities interact. Understanding these forces is essential to making sense of where the sector stands today, and what must change for it to meet the challenges ahead.
Drawing on the combined expertise of Arup’s Business and Investor Advisory, Foresight and Water teams, the report brings insight that is both commercially-grounded and future-focused. Using a foresight lens, the report examines how today’s decisions, trends and emerging signals interact to shape plausible water futures, clarifying the risks, trade-offs, and strategic choices that lie ahead.
This report outlines four plausible futures for Spain’s water sector (all emerging from today’s starting point): Smart Stability, Transparent but Thirsty, Digital Springs, and Thirst as Usual. Each is shaped by different combinations of innovation in governance and levels of water demand. Looking to 2050, the central question is whether governance, coordination and incentive structures will evolve fast enough to sustain the investments and behaviours required to secure water under intensifying climate stress and competing demands.
