According to Executive Digest, María José Rico, Government sub-delegate in the Spanish region of Huelva states that "there seem to be conditions" for negotiations with the new Portuguese Executive, highlighting that the Ministry of Ecological Transition and Demographic Challenge (Miteco) sent a letter to the Government 15 days ago.

The intention is a meeting to try to reach an agreement that makes it possible to take water from Pomarão, more specifically at the confluence of the Chança River with the Guadiana River, close to the borderline between the Iberian countries.

However, the Minister of Environment and Energy, Maria da Graça Carvalho, highlighted that she has not received a letter from Miteco, confirming that the two Environment Ministries will meet soon “to discuss other issues”.

This is not the first time that Andalusian authorities have claimed access to water from the Alqueva dam. The former Minister of Agriculture and Fisheries, Food and Environment, Isabel García Tejerina, had also refused in 2016 to propose to Portugal the possibility of water from Alqueva being sent to the province of Huelva, claiming that this solution was not included in the Plan Hydrology of the Tinto-Odiel and Piedras Basin.

Water delivery at the point in question has remained ambiguous since the beginning of the century. By claiming the water from Alqueva, the Spanish authorities only intend to make official the use of the water that they have withdrawn over the last two decades, in a systematic and constant way.

However, the Portuguese Environment Agency (APA) confirmed, in the summer of 2023, that the Portuguese Government does not approve water abstractions from the Spanish pumping station of Boca-Chança, on the Guadiana River, claiming that the system “should have stopped working in 2003, after the inauguration of the Andévalo dam”.