On the 21st of March, the city of Barcelona, through its public company Barcelona Cicle de l’Aigua SA (BCASA) joined Aqua Publica Europea (APE). The membership of Barcelona was approved by the APE Management Board, which convened in Barcelona upon the city’s invitation and took part in a seminar on public water management.

Barcelona Cicle de l’Aigua SA (BCASA) is a public company under the supervision of the Barcelona City Council. It is in charge of the Barcelona sewage network and activities related to the urban water cycle such as the reuse of runoff and non-potable water and the management of the coastline. BCASA has recently been entrusted with the task of assessing the technical and legal issues related to the remunicipalisation of the drinking water supply.

The public management of water and other issues such as transparency, participation and the human right to water were discussed at a public conference organised by the Barcelona City Council and the civil society movement Aigua és Vida, which took place at the Hospital de Sant Pau on the 21st of March. Several members of the APE Management Board took part in this event, including the President of both APE and Eau de Paris, Célia Blauel and the Vice-president of APE and President of the Milan operator CAP Holding, Alessandro Russo.

As made clear by Eloi Badia, president of BCASA and city councilor in charge of energy and the environment of Barcelona, it is the wish of the city of Barcelona to return to full public water management. In fact, one of the reasons why BCASA is joining APE is to develop exchanges with other European public water operators and learn from their remunicipalisation experiences. In this context, Barcelona and Paris have already signed an agreement favouring technical exchanges between BCASA and Eau de Paris.