Catalonia in grip of worst drought in decades

In the Sau reservoir, teams in small boats are hard at work hauling out fish with nets. The idea is to remove them before they die and rot in the water, making it unusable for human consumption.

The water level has dropped so low here - to below 10% of the reservoir's capacity - that there is already a risk the water will be contaminated by silt. Therefore, while the fish are removed, Sau's remaining water is being emptied downstream to another reservoir.

"We are trying to transfer the water as quickly as we can, because the quality right now in the winter was good [but] in the spring it will become really, really bad, and we're trying to extract all the fish we can find there," said Samuel Reyes, director of the Catalan Water Agency (ACA).

The Sau reservoir, 100km (about 62 miles) inland from Barcelona, has been supplying water to the city and other towns in the north-eastern region of Catalonia for half a century. But in recent months it has become the most visible symbol of the worst drought this area has seen in living memory.