Turning Spain's desert into Europe's orchard

The blessing of rain dampens Holy Week in drought-stricken Spain

QUESADA, Spain (AP) — Some much need rain was not going to ruin Holy Week for Alfonso del Río Martínez and his fellow Christians in the southern Spanish village of Quesada.

So when there was a break in the wet weather, they completed their annual act of spiritual devotion by parading a float bearing Christ and the Virgen through the streets of their town of some 5,000 people.

The rains during Holy Week were a blessing for large swaths of Spain suffering from chronic drought, even if they put a serious damper on the country’s intensely celebrated Easter. Many cities, towns and villages had to cancel Holy Week processions due to the persistent storms that pelted the Iberian Peninsula.

When the drops did start to fall near the end of Saturday’s procession in Quesada, a plastic tarp was quickly produced and draped over the crucifix that was being borne on the shoulders of local men and women.

Del Río called the shower that fell over the procession a “miracle” for the area, where olive orchards essential to the local economy have been hit hard by the lack of water.

“We have been through two years of drought that have left the two reservoirs that we have here completely dry, and we were asking for water desperately,” said Del Río, president of the association for Quesada’s parishes participating in the processions.

“At the same time, we had been waiting for it to rain all year and it just had to rain over these seven days. (But) we have all accepted it without any complaint since the rain is more than welcome.”

The scene of dozens of people bearing large wooden floats on their backs to parade elaborately decorated statues of Christ and/or the Virgen has been reproduced each Holy Week since Medieval times across Spain. The festivities attract the faithful but also many people who just want to experience the occasion.

While the processions take place over just a handful of days, preparations are a year-round affair. So missing out completely on the event can be a real disappointment for those involved.

Seville, which draws in thousands of spectators each Holy Week for the spectacle, had to cancel processions this past week due to the persistent rain for the first time in over a decade.

In Logroño, in northern Spain, porters were left distraught and some in tears when told that their procession had been called off.

While a letdown for many, the rain was undoubtedly a huge relief for many more — and farmers especially, who have seen serious restrictions placed on irrigation.

The faithful have tried to combat the drought by appealing to divine intervention, even in a deeply traditional Roman Catholic country that is quickly growing more secular. In Catalonia, the northeastern region around Barcelona, some village parishes have revived the faded practice of holding a special Mass and procession in hopes for rain.

Spain’s total water reserves were at 57% capacity before the Holy Week rains, but with drastic differences between the wet northern Atlantic coast and the parched northeast Mediterranean and south. While reservoirs of Spain’s northern Atlantic area were at or near 90% capacity, Catalonia was down to just 15% and parts of the south were just above 20%.

The storm front that unleashed downpours over Spain during Holy Week was behind the winds and big waves that lashed the coastline Friday, when four people died after falling into the sea.

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Associated Press writer Joseph Wilson in Barcelona contributed to this report.

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90% of some of the world’s traditional wine regions could be gone in decades. It’s part of a larger problem.

Your favorite wines may soon cease to exist. Some of the world’s traditional wine regions, from Europe to Southern California, are at risk of almost completely disappearing within decades, researchers found, as the conditions necessary to produce their grapes grow more unfruitful due to climate change.

As humans continue to burn fossil fuels, the planet is getting warmer. And those increasing temperatures — which impact everything from the water cycle to locations where people can safely live — are fueling more extreme weather. In a new literature review published in Nature Reviews Earth & Environment on Tuesday, scientists found that climate change’s impact in the coastal and lowland regions of Spain, Italy, Greece and Southern California — all home to some of the world’s most traditional wine producers — is significant.

By the end of the century — just 76 years — they found roughly 90% of these specific regions “could be at risk of disappearing.” Specifically, they found that excessive drought and more frequent heat waves fueled by climate change are responsible for the threat. An area’s temperature, precipitation, humidity, radiation and carbon dioxide levels are also vital components of wine production, and are all altered by climate change.

Overall, the study says, “We estimate a substantial risk of unsuitability (ranging from moderate to high) for 49-70% of existing wine regions, contingent on the degree of global warming.”

Southern California, for example, has a moderate risk of being unsuitable for producing wine with 2 degrees Celsius of global warming, compared to pre-industrial levels. if average temperatures rise between 2 and 4 degrees, however, the region faces a “high risk of unsuitability.” This could pose a major problem for the U.S. West Coast, which produces most of the wine in North America and 10% of the global supply.

“Overall, the net suitable ara for wine production in California could decline by up to 50% by the end of the 21st century,” researchers said. “Similar risks exist for Mexico, the southwestern United States and those regions of the east coast south of New Jersey.”

That shift is seen across much of southern Europe as well.

Current suitability across continental regions is noted by the green shading of the hexagons, from less suitable (light green) to more suitable (darker green). Future suitability change in these regions is noted by the colour of the dots within the hexagons according to the key; the left dot represents the change for a scenario in which there is global warming (GW) of up to 2 °C and the right dot the change for warming of 2-4 °C. The size of the dot represents the confidence of the assessment.

Cornelis van Leeuwen, Giovanni Sgubin, et al/Nature Reviews Earth and Environment

But all hope isn’t lost for wine itself. The rising temperatures may make other regions more suitable for growing the grapes, such as Washington State, Oregon, Tasmania and Northern France. That suitability, however, will “strongly” depend on how much temperatures rise, the researchers say, and there may be risks to environmental preservation. And even though it could bring a new form of economic growth to those areas, people will still be facing extreme weather and its costly impacts.

A changing climate also brings the risk of areas experiencing new pathogens and insects that can impact agriculture and overall environmental and human health. Drier conditions would make some grapevine issues, like downy mildew, less likely, but when it does happen, the outbreak would likely occur earlier and spread faster, the study found.

As with all elements of climate change, adaptation is “mandatory,” researchers said. Wine producers will need to consider grape varieties that are better suited for their changing regions and harvest times. It’s not just essential for global supply, but for overall wine quality.

For example, climate factors affect the levels of pH, alcohol content and acidity, researchers found. While the alcohol and pH levels are increasing in wines, the acidity levels are decreasing, which makes the microbiology within the beverage more unstable. That can lead to “increased risk of microbiological spoilage,” researchers said, and lead to an “overripe and/or cooked fruit aroma.”

Scientists have warned that current global efforts to slow global warming are not enough. Last year was the warmest on record, and the beginning of 2024 has already seen record-breaking heat as well as weather extremes ranging from unusually large blizzards to out-of-season warmth.

Already, global temperatures are 1.35 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial average overall. And the world just recently surpassed for the first time 12 consecutive months where the global average was 2 degrees Celsius above the pre-industrial average — a fact that doesn’t mean we’ve permanently crossed the critical 2-degree Celsius threshold that experts warn could have disastrous implications, but means we are well on the way there.

“One thing is certain,” researchers say in the end of their analysis, “climate change will drive major changes in global wine production in the near future. Having the flexibility to adapt to these changes will be essential.”

Li Cohen

Li Cohen is a social media producer and trending content writer for CBS News.

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Court lifts block on Telegram message service in Spain

A block on the Telegram short message service in Spain has been lifted, the national court in Madrid announced on Monday.

Judge Santiago Pedraz had provisionally lifted his blocking order first imposed on Friday, the announcement said. The judge was awaiting a report on Telegram that he had called for from the general commissioner for messaging services, it added.

The block was imposed following complaints submitted by several media companies against Telegram for infringement of rules on the protection of copyright.

Telegram could nevertheless still be accessed from Spain up until Monday. Consumer protection bodies in Spain, where Telegram has several million users, had criticized the block as disproportionate.

Country blocks can in any case be circumvented relatively easily by means of virtual private networks (VPNs).

Pedraz ordered the block after he had made repeated requests for administrative assistance from the authorities of the British Virgin Islands in the Caribbean, where Telegram is registered, to no avail.

The authorities there had not cooperated in clarifying the identity of the owners of Telegram accounts from which copyrighted content had been illegally distributed, the Spanish court found.

The El País daily reported that Telegram regularly refused to provide information to the Spanish authorities.

As the service protected the identity of its users to a greater extent than for example its larger competitor, WhatsApp, it is preferred by regime critics in dictatorships. But for this reason, Telegram also carries channels with criminal or extremist content.

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Judge in Spain orders Telegram messaging service to be blocked

A court in Madrid ordered the temporary blocking of the short message service Telegram in Spain on Sunday, citing a lawsuit from several companies claiming that Telegram was being used to violate copyright protections.

Several media companies had brought the lawsuit involving Telegram.

Consumer advocates in Spain, where there are several million Telegram users, criticized the measure as disproportionate.

However, Telegram was initially still accessible from Spain and, even if instituted, the ban could likely be circumvented with relative ease using protected network connections known as VPNs.

The court announced that Judge Santiago Pedraz had repeatedly requested administrative assistance from the authorities of the British Virgin Islands in the Caribbean, where Telegram is registered, to no avail.

Authorities there had not cooperated in clarifying the identity of the owners of Telegram accounts from which copyrighted content had been illegally distributed.

In the judge’s view, temporary blocking of the entire Telegram service was therefore “necessary, appropriate and proportionate,” according to the court.

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Spain identifies 212 German, Austrian and Dutch fighters who went missing during Spanish Civil War

Spanish government researchers said Sunday they had identified 357 foreign fighters who went missing during the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), the conflict that foreshadowed World War II.

Researchers confirmed the names of 212 fighters from Germany, Austria and the Netherlands, according to a statement from the government Sunday. Some 102 are of German origin, 70 Austrian and 40 Dutch. It gave no information on how many people of other nationalities had been identified.

The identified combatants fought within the International Brigades, military units set up by the Communist International to fight against General Francisco Franco’s fascist forces. Some 40,000 foreign men and women joined up as volunteers, fighting alongside the forces of the democratic Second Spanish Republic and against the rise of fascism in Europe in late 1930s.

The findings are based on a year of research in records held in documentary archives in Spain and Russia. Researchers combed through the daily lists of casualties and missing soldiers compiled by officers in the International Brigades.

The names of private soldiers were frequently omitted from the lists, making the research process more difficult. These lists are held in the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History, in Moscow. Researchers also dipped into the main archives on the Spanish Civil War located in Spain.

By cross-referencing documents, researchers were also able to identify the likely area where the soldiers died or were badly wounded. It is an important step toward locating their remains inside mass graves scattered across the country.

This research provides “very valuable information that gives us the opportunity to contact the families of the missing combatants and, in the future, to intervene in the mass graves that have been located,” said Alfons Aragoneses, head of the project.

All those identified were part of the Thälmann Brigade, a Communist unit made up largely of anti-Nazi Germans. The battalion was active on the Ebro River front in northeastern Spain between March and September 1938, the site of the longest and deadliest battle of the war.

The research is ongoing and it is funded by Catalan regional government, with the aim of contributing to the country’s historical memory. The second phase of the project will try to identify missing militiamen from Great Britain, Ireland, Canada and the United States. The final step would require opening the graves in search of bodies.

Historians estimate nearly 10,000 foreign volunteers died in combat on Spanish soil during the war. How many are still unidentified, buried inside graves, remains unknown.

The Spanish Civil War served as a testing ground for Hitler’s Germany and Mussolini’s Italy prior to World War II. This triggered an international outcry to try to save the Republic’s democratic government, which eventually succumbed to Franco in 1939.

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Turning Spain’s desert into Europe’s orchard

Turning Spain’s desert into Europe’s orchard – CBS News

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In southern Spain, one of the driest parts of Europe, a healthy crop of high-tech greenhouses has sprouted from the desert. Correspondent Seth Doane looks at how innovative approaches to agriculture – from organic farming and using desalinated seawater, to breeding pollinators and predators of insect pests – have turned this arid land into a source of abundance.

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