BBC英語新聞：西班牙水資源危機！

Water Crisis in Spain（共三段音頻）

(一)There've been floods, gales and heat waves across Europe -- and some lay the blame for the unpredictable weather on climate change.

Spain is undergoing its worst drought for sixty years with many areas in the south of the country not seeing a drop of rain for months. Some reservoirs are nearly empty while the volume of water in some rivers is down to a third of its normal level.

Guadalajara, in the centre of the country, used to be a prosperous tourist area. Its old Moorish name, ironically, means "water running through rocks." But when Emma Jane Kirby visited the small town of Buendia, she found an ecological disaster area in the making.

There's a strange smell around the lake at Buendia, the sort of smell that greets you when you first open the fridge after a week or two away from home -- a putrid stench of salad leaves that've begun to turn to compost in their cellophane bag. I'm reluctant to mention this to my companion, Marco Obispo because this after all is the place where he has spent every one of his summer holidays and just a few hours ago we were pouring over the family photograph books while he reminisced wistfully about his idyllic childhood.

The problem is I don't recognize this place as being the same one he showed me in the pictures. Those images boasted bronzed children racing joyfully down a bank of emerald green grass towards a vast expanse of water so blue that the cornflower sky above looked dazzled. But this landscape is bleached and barren, the banks crusted white, the ponds patchy and the colour of thin ink. Beneath my feet crunch a graveyard of dead algae, as fragile and lifeless as newly shed snakeskin and not a single child's shout breaks the hot and stifling air.

"That smell," says Marco suddenly "Is the smell of life drying up and rotting away." He pushes his big arms in front of him and begins to mime the breaststroke. "My dad taught me to swim just about where you're standing now -- I remember being scared of the deep water then -- now it's only about knee deep in the centre of the lake."

譯文：在整個歐洲，洪水、暴風和熱浪連續出現，一些人把這些歸咎於氣候的無常變化。

西班牙正經歷六十年來最嚴重的乾旱，該國南方不少地區數月來滴雨未見。一些水庫幾近乾涸，一些河流的流量不到常年的三分之一。

位於該國中部的瓜達拉哈拉過去是一個旅遊業繁榮的地區。它原來的摩爾語名字，很有諷刺意味，意思是“流淌在石頭上的水”。但是，當埃瑪·簡·科比來到布溫迪亞這個小鎮時，她發現一個生態災難正在形成。

布溫迪亞湖周圍瀰漫着一種怪異的氣味，就像你離家一兩個星期後第一次打開電冰箱時撲鼻而來的那種氣味——麪包片腐爛變成裝在玻璃紙袋裡的肥料的那種氣味。我都不願向同事馬可·奧比斯珀提起，因爲這裡畢竟是他每年夏天度假的地方，而且就在幾個小時前我們還在翻看他的家庭相冊，他還充滿希望地回憶起了自己田園詩一般的孩提時代。

問題是我都認不出這地方與剛纔他給我看的照片裡的是同一個地方。在照片裡，曬得黝黑的孩子歡快地沿着長滿翠綠色青草的湖岸追逐，一直跑到一片開闊的湖水，藍色的湖水使頭頂上矢車草色的天空顯得是那麼耀眼。但是，現在這裡是一片蒼白荒涼的景象，湖岸裹着掉色的外殼，殘存的一片片湖水象補丁一樣顯出淡淡的黑色。在我的腳下，一片枯死的藻類發出嘎吱嘎吱的響聲，它們脆弱而無生氣，就象剛蛻下來的蛇皮。令人窒息的空氣中沒有一絲孩子的喊叫聲。

“這氣味，”馬可突然開口說，“是生命死去爛掉的氣味。”他在胸前揮舞着雙臂，開始模仿遊蛙泳的姿勢。“我父親就是在你站的這個地方教我游泳的，當時我還害怕水太深，現在湖中心的水也只能到膝蓋了。”

(二)（此段音頻前面部分缺文本）Guadalajara in the centre of Spain has been hit hard by drought. The rains haven't come since Spring last year, leaving the soil parched and lifeless, as cracked and scarred as the face of a small pox victim. The sun has sucked the life from anything that once had the energy to be green and stealthily, its hot tongue has lapped away at the lake's edge reducing the reservoirs to a fifth of the size they were twenty years ago.

譯文：位於西班牙中部的瓜達拉哈拉遭受了嚴重的乾旱。自從去年春天以來就一直沒下過雨，這使得土地焦熱，毫無生機，就像麻疹病人的臉一樣裂縫密集，疤痕累累。曾經充滿活力、碧綠神秘的那些東西被太陽吸去了生命。太陽的火舌已經舔過湖邊，使水庫裡的儲水量只剩下二十年前的五分之一。

（三）As quickly as the water's evaporated, so have the tourists -- the holidaymakers from all over Europe with whom Marco played as a child have been lured away to other areas of Spain where swimming or sailing a boat can be done without fear of scraping knees or hulls on the lake bed.

But nature alone isn't responsible for this region's demise. After the civil war, the government of General Franco, built a series of dams to supply water to the growing urban and expanding farm areas of 20th century Spain. Under legal agreements made during that time, the Buendia dam is still obliged to relinquish enormous quantities of its precious water to quench the thirst of residents living in Murcia in Southern Spain where the climate is even drier.

As a local man, Marco Obispo is fiercely loyal to his native region but his father Vincente is even more territorial. Vincente is Buendia's mayor, and with residents of the surrounding villages, he's trying to put pressure on the local government to quash these long standing arrangements which he claims are making Murcia rich at the expense of Guadalajara. There are a lot of priests in the Obispo family and Vincente has inherited the evangalist's easy fluency. A big man with a determined handshake, he makes a seriously convincing prophet.

"Spain's story of water," he tells me "Is a story about a dog chasing its tail. We cannot ask one dry region to give away the dregs of its resources so another part of the country can fritter it away on golf courses and swimming pools." He looks me squarely in the eye, without quite accusing me. "I'm sure tourists love these luxuries for their holidays but the more fancy apartments we build, the bigger the strain on our water supply. Our landscape is crying out for a rethink of our policies."

If the landscape is crying out for new water management, then it's weeping with painful dust-dry tears. North east of Buendia, only the ancient Spanish pine forests seem able to sustain life, some atavistic survival instinct seeing them triumph over droughts which long ago killed off the weaker competition. But the trees are now so dehydrated and sapless they've become irresistible to fire -- two weeks ago, thirteen thousand hectares were lost to a spark from a barbecue -- an inferno that also claimed the lives of eleven men. As far as the eye can see now, the hills are almost bare, thinly peppered with charred, thin tree trunks, the old guard of a once proud past.

Vincente and Marco Obispo look out across Guadalajara's arid plains and I can see them struggling to recreate the techni coloured haven of their old family photographs.

"Water is the basis for all life," says Vincente "And in Spain we are just watching it ebb away."

譯文：就像水快速蒸發一樣，遊客也迅速減少——那些曾經在馬可的童年時代與他一起玩耍的來自歐洲各地的度假者被吸引到西班牙的其它地方去了，在那些地方，可以游泳或駕帆船，根本不用擔心會擦傷膝蓋或船底撞着湖底。

但是，自然因素並不是這一地區生態退化的唯一原因。在內戰結束後，弗朗哥將軍的政府建了一系列的水壩來爲20世紀西班牙不斷增長的城市和不斷擴大的耕種區提供水源。按照當時的法律協議，布溫迪亞水壩要放出大量極爲寶貴的水來解決生活在西班牙南部穆爾西亞的居民的缺水問題，因爲那裡的氣候更乾旱。

作爲一個當地居民，馬可·奧比斯珀對故土非常熱愛，但他的父親文森特更具有地域意識。文森特是布溫迪亞的市長，他正與周圍村莊的居民一起努力向當地政府施壓，要求他們取消那些早就存在的協議。他認爲這些協議正在犧牲瓜達拉哈拉的利益來讓穆爾西亞變富。奧比斯珀家族有不少人是牧師，文森特繼承了福音傳道者的健談性格。這位身材高大的男子堅毅地與我握了握手，很認真地做了一個令人信服的預言。

“西班牙的水問題，”他告訴我，“就像一隻狗在追逐自己的尾巴。我們不能要求一個乾旱地區讓出自己微薄的資源，而讓本國其他地區浪費在高爾夫球場和游泳池這樣的設施上。”他直盯着我的雙眼，卻沒有責備我的意思。“我知道遊客們喜歡利用這些奢侈的設施度假，但是，我們建的漂亮公寓越多，我們缺水的問題越嚴重。我們的土地正在哭喊着要人們重新認識我們的政策。”

如果這塊土地正在哭喊着要求新的水資源管理政策，那麼它也正在掛着飽含灰塵的幹淚低泣。在布溫迪亞東北，只有古老的西班牙松林似乎還能勉強支撐着活下來，一些返祖的生存本能使它們顯示出了戰勝乾旱的跡象，而乾旱在很久以前就奪去了較弱的競爭者的生命。但是，這些樹現在也嚴重脫水，瀕臨枯萎，它們甚至見火就着——兩個星期前，一萬三千公頃的松林因爲烤肉野餐的一個火星而被燒燬——這場森林大火還奪去了十一個人的生命。現在，目之所及，幾乎都是光禿的小山，山上稀疏地分佈着燒焦的細樹幹，就像是它們曾經引以驕傲的昔日時光的守護者。

文森特和馬可·奧比斯珀放眼眺望瓜達拉哈拉乾旱的平原，我能看出來，他們正在重新構築他們老照片上多彩的天堂。

“水是一切生命的基礎，”文森特說，“而在西班牙，我們正看着它一天天減少。”