EVOLUCIÓN HISTÓRICA Y NORMATIVA ESTATAL ACTUAL SOBRE AGUAS SUBTERRÁNEAS.

Abstract

The author, who has already addressed the subject of underground water legislation on other occasions over the last three decades, now returns to this important subject that arouses so much social and legal conflict. The paper endeavours to be a synthesis or description of the state of the matter, first, in terms of the historical evolution of underground water legislation since the water laws of 1866-1879, including the important legislation of 1985 and arriving at the most recent legislative reforms of well laws, and second, as a personal, dogmatic, exegetic reflection on the legislation in force nowadays on underground waters, both public and private. The paper furnishes and assesses some carefully selected doctrine and case law. The paper is characterised not only by its being very much up to date, but also by its attempt to show -without neglecting to explain the more important administrative legal aspects- the depth and difficulty of the problems of civil and even procedural law that lurk in this subject, as well as a number of well thought-out, important observations about the subject's mortgage- related facet. According to the author, the general non-retroactive nature of laws on private underground water, which forms the majority of the country's underground water, is key in how to approach the legal problems in all those fields correctly and how to meditate on said problems. The author's discourse and reflection have to defeat the obstacles thrown up by the fact that legal regulation is rather deficient and the fact that, misleadingly, the two highly defective, extensive regulations that purport to deal with water legislation practically never mention private water or the property registration system.