Re-municipalisation of Water in the Frameword of Re-definition of Democracy. The case of the Catalan City of Terrassa

Abstract

This article intends to present the re-municipalisation of the management of urban water as a mechanism to oppose neoliberalism and highlight its connections with the search for new ways of achieving greater democracy. To do this, the rise of the notion of the ‘common’ seems to be the tool that has been used to re-think re-municipalisation as a mechanism to promote social change.

Between 2015 and 2019, the most relevant case of this was the city of Terrassa, where urban water supply—up to that moment in charge of the private company Mina Pública d’Aigües de Terrassa S.A.—was re-municipalised. This process of re-municipalisation gave rise to Terrassa’s Observatory of Water, which is one of the most innovative initiatives in public-supply management incorporating mechanisms of co-production led by the organized citizenry itself; a space-tool which, despite marking the end of the process, it is also the door to deeper debates as well as to the opening of new lines of work whose reach extends beyond water and the city of Terrassa.