Anybody who has passed by Rules Reservoir cannot fail to have noted how empty it is - in places tiny islands rocks are emerging as the water level drops.

And it’s gone down a lot lately, despite a little rainfall and snowmelt coming from Sierra Nevada – most of the snow is on the northern face and the one that we can see from the coast has little and it doesn’t last long.

The foliage along the banks where the water once lapped is separated now by a dried bank of 15 to 20 metres before you reach the water, yet farmers see this reservoir as their salvation but what use an empty cup when you’re thirsty?

The fact is that it has literally lost half its stored water in only one year, and no water is being withdrawn from it for irrigation, don’t forget, so that Europe’s Biggest Swimming Pool has become Europe’s Biggest Paddling Pool.

The reservoir contains 39 hectometres when it has the capacity to contain 111 hectometres; in other words, its at 35 percent of its capacity – last year at this time there were 70 hectometres in it. In fact, it hasn’t been this low since they started to fill it in the first years of this century.

(News/Noticias: Vélez de Benaudalla, Costa Tropical, Granada, Andalucia)