BBC英语新闻：西班牙水资源危机！

Water Crisis in Spain（共三段音频）

(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."

译文：在整个欧洲，洪水、暴风和热浪连续出现，一些人把这些归咎于气候的无常变化。

西班牙正经历六十年来最严重的干旱，该国南方不少地区数月来滴雨未见。一些水库几近干涸，一些河流的流量不到常年的三分之一。

位于该国中部的瓜达拉哈拉过去是一个旅游业繁荣的地区。它原来的摩尔语名字，很有讽刺意味，意思是“流淌在石头上的水”。但是，当埃玛·简·科比来到布温迪亚这个小镇时，她发现一个生态灾难正在形成。

布温迪亚湖周围弥漫着一种怪异的气味，就像你离家一两个星期后第一次打开电冰箱时扑鼻而来的那种气味——面包片腐烂变成装在玻璃纸袋里的肥料的那种气味。我都不愿向同事马可·奥比斯珀提起，因为这里毕竟是他每年夏天度假的地方，而且就在几个小时前我们还在翻看他的家庭相册，他还充满希望地回忆起了自己田园诗一般的孩提时代。

问题是我都认不出这地方与刚才他给我看的照片里的是同一个地方。在照片里，晒得黝黑的孩子欢快地沿着长满翠绿色青草的湖岸追逐，一直跑到一片开阔的湖水，蓝色的湖水使头顶上矢车草色的天空显得是那么耀眼。但是，现在这里是一片苍白荒凉的景象，湖岸裹着掉色的外壳，残存的一片片湖水象补丁一样显出淡淡的黑色。在我的脚下，一片枯死的藻类发出嘎吱嘎吱的响声，它们脆弱而无生气，就象刚蜕下来的蛇皮。令人窒息的空气中没有一丝孩子的喊叫声。

“这气味，”马可突然开口说，“是生命死去烂掉的气味。”他在胸前挥舞着双臂，开始模仿游蛙泳的姿势。“我父亲就是在你站的这个地方教我游泳的，当时我还害怕水太深，现在湖中心的水也只能到膝盖了。”

(二)（此段音频前面部分缺文本）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.

译文：位于西班牙中部的瓜达拉哈拉遭受了严重的干旱。自从去年春天以来就一直没下过雨，这使得土地焦热，毫无生机，就像麻疹病人的脸一样裂缝密集，疤痕累累。曾经充满活力、碧绿神秘的那些东西被太阳吸去了生命。太阳的火舌已经舔过湖边，使水库里的储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."

译文：就像水快速蒸发一样，游客也迅速减少——那些曾经在马可的童年时代与他一起玩耍的来自欧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，可以游泳或驾帆船，根本不用担心会擦伤膝盖或船底撞着湖底。

但是，自然因素并不是这一地区生态退化的唯一原因。在内战结束后，弗朗哥将军的政府建了一系列的水坝来为20世纪西班牙不断增长的城市和不断扩大的耕种区提供水源。按照当时的法律协议，布温迪亚水坝要放出大量极为宝贵的水来解决生活在西班牙南部穆尔西亚的居民的缺水问题，因为那里的气候更干旱。

作为一个当地居民，马可·奥比斯珀对故土非常热爱，但他的父亲文森特更具有地域意识。文森特是布温迪亚的市长，他正与周围村庄的居民一起努力向当地政府施压，要求他们取消那些早就存在的协议。他认为这些协议正在牺牲瓜达拉哈拉的利益来让穆尔西亚变富。奥比斯珀家族有不少人是牧师，文森特继承了福音传道者的健谈性格。这位身材高大的男子坚毅地与我握了握手，很认真地做了一个令人信服的预言。

“西班牙的水问题，”他告诉我，“就像一只狗在追逐自己的尾巴。我们不能要求一个干旱地区让出自己微薄的资源，而让本国其他地区浪费在高尔夫球场和游泳池这样的设施上。”他直盯着我的双眼，却没有责备我的意思。“我知道游客们喜欢利用这些奢侈的设施度假，但是，我们建的漂亮公寓越多，我们缺水的问题越严重。我们的土地正在哭喊着要人们重新认识我们的政策。”

如果这块土地正在哭喊着要求新的水资源管理政策，那么它也正在挂着饱含灰尘的干泪低泣。在布温迪亚东北，只有古老的西班牙松林似乎还能勉强支撑着活下来，一些返祖的生存本能使它们显示出了战胜干旱的迹象，而干旱在很久以前就夺去了较弱的竞争者的生命。但是，这些树现在也严重脱水，濒临枯萎，它们甚至见火就着——两个星期前，一万三千公顷的松林因为烤肉野餐的一个火星而被烧毁——这场森林大火还夺去了十一个人的生命。现在，目之所及，几乎都是光秃的小山，山上稀疏地分布着烧焦的细树干，就像是它们曾经引以骄傲的昔日时光的守护者。

文森特和马可·奥比斯珀放眼眺望瓜达拉哈拉干旱的平原，我能看出来，他们正在重新构筑他们老照片上多彩的天堂。

“水是一切生命的基础，”文森特说，“而在西班牙，我们正看着它一天天减少。”