Climate activists in Spain have filled in holes on 10 golf courses to draw attention to the huge amounts of water the “elitist leisure pursuit” uses as a nationwide drought continues in the first heatwave of the year.
Members of Extinction Rebellion (XR) revealed their latest direct action campaign in a video released on Sunday, saying they had targeted courses in locations including Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, the Basque country, Navarra and Ibiza.
Footage showed activists plugging holes with soil and planting seedlings alongside signs reading: “Drought alert. Golf course closed for climate justice.”
In a statement, XR said it had carried out the action to “denounce the wasting of water by golf in the midst of one of the worst droughts in history”. It said golf courses in Spain used more water than the cities of Madrid and Barcelona combined, with each hole requiring more than 100,000 litres of water a day to maintain the greens.
“We cannot allow this kind of elitist leisure pursuit to continue,” the statement said. “Spain is drying up and the rural world is suffering losses running into millions because of the lack of water for crops – all because of an entertainment enjoyed by scarcely 0.6% of the population. Rich people and their leisure activities that gobble up essential resources are a luxury we cannot afford.”
While all of Spain has been in drought since January 2022, some parts of the country are more gravely affected by the lack of rain than others. Authorities in Catalonia, which has been in drought for more than three years, have introduced laws including a 40% reduction in water to be used for agriculture, a 15% reduction for industrial uses, and a cut in the average daily supply per inhabitant from 250 litres to 230 litres.
In May, the Spanish government approved a €2.2bn (£1.9bn) plan to help farmers and consumers cope with the drought, which has been exacerbated by the hottest and driest April on record.
“Spain is a country that is used to periods of drought but there’s no doubt that, as a consequence of the climate change we’re experiencing, we’re seeing far more frequent and intense events and phenomena,” said the environment minister, Teresa Ribera.
“And we need to prepare for that by taking advantage of all the technical capacity that Spain has accrued and developed over many years. We need to deal with episodes such as the present one – and that requires planning, structural measures and also, obviously, short-term and immediate help plans.”
