Province launches Digraqua water overhaul

Water pipes are the kind of infrastructure people forget about until they fail. That is basically the point of DIGRAQUA — a province-wide push in Granada to make local water networks visible in real time, so leaks, pressure drops, and weak spots get caught earlier instead of after service starts breaking down. On May 3, the Diputación de Granada said the first phase is now underway across 61 municipalities, most of them smaller towns that do not have the kind of centralized, heavily monitored systems bigger urban areas rely on. (ahoragranada.com) ### What is DIGRAQUA, exactly? It is Granada province’s digitalization project for the urban water cycle — meaning drinking water supply, network control, and parts of wastewater management. The broad idea is simple: add sensors, remote monitoring, diagnostics, and data tools so local operators can see what is happening inside the system instead of guessing from complaints, meter gaps, or visible breakdowns. (dipgra.es) ### What changed this week? The new part is not the funding approval itself. That came earlier. Back in late 2023, Granada’s project was selected with a total planned investment of €10,208,459.12, and in February 2024 the provincial council approved the budget modification needed to start spending. What happened now is the launch of the first operational phase — the point where the project moves from approved plan to fieldwork and deployment. (aguasresiduales.info) ### Why 61 municipalities? Because this is aimed at the part of the province where water management is most fragmented. Granada’s own project materials split the province into three water-management zones. In the Vega de Granada and Costa Tropical areas, service is already more supramunicipal and professionalized. The weaker po(aguasresiduales.info)es. DIGRAQUA targets that gap. (dipgra.es) ### What does the money pay for? The headline number is just over €10.2 million. Of that, €7,186,122.61 comes from EU NextGeneration funds, with the rest covered by the Diputación de Granada and the participating local entities. That money is going into dia(dipgra.es) old networks a nervous system. (aguasresiduales.info) ### Who benefits? The official count attached to the launch is 130,450 residents. Granada’s project page also references 61 local entities with a combined population figure of 137,450 under selection criteria tied to the national recovery plan. That mismatch looks like a difference between the broader eligible set and the resid(aguasresiduales.info)ject affecting well over 130,000 people. (ahoragranada.com) ### Why does “reducing losses” matter so much? Because water loss is expensive in three ways at once. You lose treated water, you waste energy moving it, and you often discover the problem only after pressure or supply gets worse for residents. Smaller systems are especially vulnerable because they h(ahoragranada.com)er. (ahoragranada.com) ### Is this just a Granada story? Not really. It sits inside Spain’s broader PERTE program for digitalizing the water cycle under the recovery plan. So yes, this is a local launch, but it is also one example of how EU recovery money is being turned into boring, high-value infrastructure — the kind that does not make headlines every day but changes whether a town can manage drought, leakage, and service quality with less guesswork. (dipgra.es) ### Bottom line DIGRAQUA is not flashy. But that is the point. Granada is finally moving a long-funded water project into the field, and for smaller municipalities, better data may be the difference between chasing breakdowns and preventing them.