A related question concerns the availability of conflict resolution mechanisms within the river basin. The irrigation communities have irrigation courts to resolve disagreements among water users, but no comparable forum exists on the river basin scale. Water users who wish to challenge a decision taken by CH Guadalquivir can go to the constitutional court, but as mentioned earlier such a challenge can address only whether the CH has exceeded its granted authority, not disagreements over policy direction, resource allocation, and so on.

Monitoring of water deliveries, water use, and water quality occurs in the basin, with water quality monitoring performed principally by CH Guadalquivir and by urban water suppliers. Water use by license holders is monitored inconsistently since the water user registry is not complete, and most of the individuals interviewed for this study acknowledged a substantial problem with illegal water uses continuing in the basin. With respect to irrigation water use, the CH monitors what goes into and comes out of irrigation communities, but monitoring of use by individual irrigators occurs within the irrigation communities and it is impossible to draw sound conclusions across the hundreds of communities about how effectively this is done. With respect to urban water use, the larger suppliers (such as those in the Seville metropolitan area) meter water usage, but in many multi-family buildings such metering does not go all the way down to the individual water user level.

# **10. Concluding Remarks**

In some respects, Spain is no different from any other country—integrated river basin management in the new water policy environment is genuinely difficult, and it is not clear that any country is doing it especially well. Shortcomings observed in Guadalquivir are witnessed in other places too. In many ways, Spain is further along than almost anyone else in pursuing IWRM with a river basin focus, but Spain’s experience also demonstrates that the establishment of river basin authorities in and of itself is not a solution. Even under such favorable organizational circumstances, political, economic, legal, and historical factors complicate the development and implementation of IWRM at the river basin scale. Vast changes in the Spanish political system are intertwined, chronologically and substantively, with the development of current water institutions and policies.

The central government in Spain made an effort starting 75 years ago to establish basin-scale structures and use them for water development, water planning, and certain aspects of water management. Equally clearly, this was a “top-down” creation of basin organizations by the central government rather than a “bottom-up” process initiated by local water users. The basin organizations in Spain remain tied to the central government. Even with internal structures providing for stakeholder representation, CHs were established as agencies of the central government and remain so today (at least the inter-regional ones).

The end of the Franco dictatorship in the 1970s brought about a significant decentralization of the whole political system, including not only democratized nationallevel politics but also the creation of a new level of regional government, the CAs. The devolution of powers to those regional governments included water-related authorities and responsibilities that further decentralize water management in Spain, but not to the river basin scale per se. Thus, it is clear that several aspects of water management in 34