Water Privatization in Spain

Abstract

Water management in Spain is submitted to a non‐uniform geographical and seasonal distribution of water resources. The non‐uniform distribution of resources is worsened by the non‐uniform allocation of demand (mainly irrigation and urban). Because that, water supply, aquifers, and wetlands are driven to a high risk. Even though, there are examples of good water management, as is shown for the private industrial productivity of used water. Spain has a very long tradition in public water management (first water law in 1879) at different levels from ministry to municipalities, including users communities. A lot of these organisations are anchored in very old ways of doing, given private sector the opportunity to enter and grow up. A survey about it is presented. In the management of urban water, there are different organisations involved: central administration; autonomic, regional and metropolitan authorities; urban water suppliers and the sanitation authority. The recently approved changes in the former Spanish Water Law, limiting water rights and introducing water market, the new and expected Hydrological National Plan and the European Framework Directive, reinforce the opportunities of the private sector to enter, giving financial resources, technological advances and quick answers to new social concepts in water managerial procedures. We can observe how the Spanish administration uses private water suppliers' front desks to collect taxes and to supply capital to invest in infrastructures and water technology. The question that needs to be addressed is the nature and the impact of the privatisation process in Spain. The unrealistic water urban services price in Spain has been studied and it is presented and evaluated by regions, presenting a deficit to be covered in the future and been a significant gross value of the future business, which invite private sector to participate in. To give a general scope over the evolution of the roll played by the private and public sector, the case of Catalonia, the more evolved autonomous region of Spain in water management, is presented as an example of the future for the rest of the country.     

Evaluating Spain's Reparation Law

The Reparation Law1 This article follows Aguilar, Balcells, and Cebolla in referring to the Law of Historical Memory as the Reparation Law. Although Aguilar et al. do not specify why they choose this terminology, the term is used here as it better denotes the law's content. Aguilar, Balcells, and Cebolla, ‘Determinants of Attitudes Towards Transitional Justice’, 3. View all notes approved on 26 December 2007 is the latest link in a chain of reparatory measures from the earliest days of Spain's transition to democracy to deal with the legacy of the Civil War and the Francoist dictatorship. Numerous articles have analysed the historical memory movement2 See Encarnación, ‘Reconciliation After Democratization’; and Gálvez Biesca, ‘El proceso’. View all notes and the reasons behind the timing and scope of Spain's reckoning with the past.3 See Encarnación, ‘Reconciliation After Democratization’; Aguilar, ‘Justice, Politics and Memory’, Barahona de Brito, Gonzaléz-Enríquez, and Aguilar, The Politics of Memory; and Blakeley, ‘Digging Up Spain's Past’. View all notes This literature presents the case of Spain as a counterpoint to the received wisdom of the transitional justice literature that successful democratization requires reconciliation. This article contributes to the specific literature on Spain, and the wider transitional justice literature, by focusing on an area which has not yet been analysed: the ‘co-construction’ and content of the Law. Through a comparison of the draft bill and the final Law, this article fills this gap.     

Sketching and validating the location-based services (LBS) regulatory framework in Australia

Location-based services (LBS) are defined as those applications that combine the location of a mobile device associated with a given entity (individual or object) together with contextual information to offer a value-added service. LBS solutions are being deployed globally, and in some markets like Australia, without appropriate regulatory provisions in place. Recent debates in Australia have addressed the need to bridge the gap between technological developments and legal/regulatory provisions. This requires an assessment of the regulatory environment within a given social context such as Australia. The core components of such an investigation include: (a) composing a conceptual framework for analysing regulation of technologies such as LBS, one that is sensitive to public policy themes and challenges, and (b) applying this conceptual framework to the Australian setting in order to sketch and define the components of the present framework, and identify areas for improvement through a process of validation. This paper addresses these aims, demonstrating how the current regulatory framework in Australia is bound by legislation with respect to privacy, telecommunications, surveillance, and national security (that is, anti-terrorism), in addition to a set of industry guidelines for location-service providers (LSPs). The existing Australian framework, however, is lacking in its coverage and treatment of LBS and location data, and does not adequately address the themes and challenges in the defined conceptual framework.     

Intellectual Property Counterfeiting and Piracy – Response of Small Commonwealth Jurisdictions∗

This article provides an analysis of some recent developments relating to Constitutional law in Jamaica, including the legal issues arising from tied elections and the dual nationality of parliamentarians. It also discusses a case relating to the failure to incorporate the United Nations Convention on Transnational Organized Crime (the Palermo Convention). In this case, though the Palermo Convention contemplates investigations by agents of one country on the territory of another for certain crimes, one state party found it was unable to carry out such investigations on the territory of another. Although the latter country, a CARICOM member state, was also a party to the Convention, it had not enacted the required implementing legislation     

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我国新刑事诉讼法首次规定了对警察出庭作证的条款,但在实际操作中尚未建立具有可操作性的制度。本文从我国警察出庭作证的现状入手,分析其面临的障碍,在借鉴国外这一制度的基础上,结合我国的实际情况,提出一些解决我国警察出庭作证问题应采取的措施。     

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