Aigües de Barcelona (Agbar)
Agbar, Aigües de Barcelona, is a subsidiary from the french multinational group Suez in Spain, specialized on water treatment and distribution. Interestingly, it was owned by Suez and Caixa Bank, one of the biggest Spanish banks and included in the IBEX 35 group, the guiding Spanish stock market index. After the Agbar-Acciona legal battle over the control of ATLL, La Caixa sold Agbar and now it belongs 100% to Suez.
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It has operated since 1975 and originated from the Sociedad General Aguas de Barcelona (1867), who privately managed the city’s urban water supply and distribution, without contract. Yet, on November 6th, 2012, the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona regularized the legal status of Agbar’s concession over Barcelona’s water supply in 23 municipalities, through the creation of a new company: Aguas de Barcelona Empresa del Ciclo Integral del Agua, which controls controls the high and low water supply in the city. Together with Suez, in 2006 Agbar was also awarded the contract to construct the Llobregat desalination plant.
Agbar’s hegemonic control over Barcelona's water supply and management has led to several legal confrontations with other water giants. For instance, this was the case when in december 2012 Barcelona’s water supply network Aigües Ter-Llobregat (ATLL), which also managed the desalination plant, was privatized under the government of Artur Mas in Catalonia and sold to action for a billionaire contract to Acciona, Agbar contested the award of the contract and appealed to court on January 2nd, 2013. Acciona had threaten Agbar’s tacit legitimacy through the years over the control of water supply in the city, so on October 31st, 2014, the company decides to stop paying water from Acciona’s ATLL, arguing that the contract was in liquidation phase.
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This episode shows a seven-year titanic legal battle between two multinational corporations, Agbar and Acciona, emerged from the allocation of rights to control water in the city and hence, its conceptual commodification. In brief, it evidences how water in Barcelona, and elsewhere, is intrinsically political. It shows how deeply entrenched political and economic powers are in the decisions over who will control water management and supply (Agbar or Acciona) and how (publicly or privately). It is only under this mind set of water as a commodity and not as a human right, where its infrastructures like desalination plants are subjected to financialization processes, that the scramble for control can take place.
During our interview, Lluís Ballesteros from AMAP explained:
​“Large business lobby defending private water management, for instance, Agbar and la Caixa (which is also a Suez shareholder). It is like a royal lineage dynasty where everything is related, there is a lot of inbreeding. The main donor to the PSC (Catalan Socialist Party) is La Caixa and from what was previously the old “Convergència” party (now PDcat and Junts per Cat) is Agbar. Agbar distributes the game. The CEO of Agbar was also the manager of the PSC, there are many revolving doors and great co-optation, a very strong penetration between the political sphere and Agbar. Agbar is omnipresent”
“Agbar trains the judges of the judicial council of catalonia on water matters. We see a process of personnel co-optation. Agbar is in contention (courts) with 40 municipalities that want public water management, it is something very complex. It is against nature that water management is based on giving dividends to shareholders”
​“Agbar supports both parties on the right and on the left: the Catalan socialist party and Convergence, they ensure that this way of business continues like this.(...) [Moreover,] The important press will not buy the news of AMAP because they live on subsidies from Agbar. They buy the press with their advertising”.