In several cities and regions in Spain there has been a fight against privatization of
water supply in the past decade. Some cities have decided to re-municipalise water
supply and debates about implementing the human right to water and sanitation
have been held in many parts of Spain, following the success of the Right2Water
European Citizens’ Initiative. This paper examines howthe European “Right2Water”
movement influenced struggles for access to and control over water in Spain
from a political ecology perspective. It explores how “Right2Water” fuelled the
debate on privatization and remunicipalization of water services and what heritage
it has left in Spain. We unfold relationships with and between water movements
in Spain—like the Red Agua Publica—and relationships with other networks—like
the indignados movement and subsequently how water protests converged with
austerity protests. In different places these struggles took different shapes. By
deploying five case studies (Madrid, Valladolid, Terrassa, Barcelona, and Andalucía),
we look at how the human right to water and sanitation framework served as a
tool for social and water justice movements. Struggles for water justice in Spain
are ongoing and we seek to identify the temporarily outcomes of these struggles,
and whether power balances in Spain’s water services provision have shifted in the
past decade.