<h6><strong>Eduardo González</strong></h6> <h4><strong>On November 19, the agreements between Spain and Portugal on the safety of navigation and recreational boating and on fishing in the International Section of the Guadiana River (TIRG), agreed upon in October 2024 during the 35th Spanish-Portuguese Summit, entered into force.</strong></h4> The Spanish-Portuguese Summit, held on October 23, 2024, in the Portuguese town of Faro (Algarve, in the south) under the slogan "Water, a Common Good," concluded with the signing of eleven agreements on areas such as water, the environment, and culture, and with the commitment of both governments to ask France and the European Commission to facilitate rail and energy interconnections between the Iberian Peninsula and the rest of Europe. Regarding the Summit's main theme, shared water management, the Environment Ministries of both countries reached several agreements in Faro on the protection of river ecosystems and the management of water resources to ensure the sustainability of socio-economic activities. This included two agreements: one on the safety of navigation and recreational boating on the International Section of the Guadiana River (TIRG), and another on fishing on the same International Section of the same river. The signing of the two agreements had been authorized by the Spanish Council of Ministers on October 1 and 8, 2024. Both agreements apply to the waters and riverbanks delimited in accordance with the Treaty between the Kingdom of Spain and the Portuguese Republic establishing the closing line of the mouths of the Miño and Guadiana rivers and delimiting the international sections of both rivers, signed in Vila Real on May 30, 2017, and in force in both countries. The objective of the first agreement, as published this Thursday, November 27, in the Official State Gazette (BOE), is to regulate recreational boating, the practice of water sports, and navigational safety in the TIRG (Tierra del Fuego River Basin), taking into account the gradual increase in recreational boating observed in this section and considering “the existence of a common, equitable, and reasonable use of the TIRG waters, the particular characteristics of the Guadiana River, and the principle of free movement.” Likewise, the objective of the second agreement is to regulate professional and recreational (leisure and sport) fishing in the TIRG in order to guarantee the sustainable exploitation of resources, with particular emphasis on the inspection and monitoring of the activity, ensuring equal conditions for the fishing community of both sides “while protecting the ecosystem and biodiversity and preventing the overexploitation of natural resources.” Within this same framework of protecting shared water resources, the then Vice-President for Ecological Transition (and current Vice-President of the European Commission), Teresa Ribera, and her Portuguese counterpart, Maria da Graça Carvalho, signed two other agreements almost a month before the summit. These agreements established minimum daily flows for the Tagus River and, for the first time, a monthly flow regime for the final stretch of the Guadiana River. On June 26, 2025, the other two major water management agreements (in this case, regarding infrastructure) signed in Faro came into force. Specifically, they covered the construction of two international bridges: one linking the towns of Sanlúcar de Guadiana (Spain) and Alcoutim (Portugal) across the Guadiana River, and the other connecting the towns of Cedillo (Spain) and Montalvão-Nisa (Portugal) across the Sever River. The objective of both agreements, according to the Government, is "to improve the conditions for the movement of vehicles and people between the two States", thereby contributing not only to increasing the flow of people and improving human and economic exchanges between the two countries, but also to developing the cross-border areas located, on the one hand, in the Autonomous Community of Andalusia and the Algarve Region and, on the other hand, in the Autonomous Community of Extremadura and the Alentejo Region.
