[narag]

OK, I have nothing bad to say about acequias or irrigation. Having grown up with a big orchad at home I enjoyed watching all those water inventions. Not sure about "Moorish". More like "muslim era" heritage?

"Making life possible in one of Europe's driest regions" is misleading though.

Eastwards Sierra Nevada you find Almería, where all the Spaghetti Westerns were filmed. It's indeed a desertic zone, just not a very big extension.

The hyperbolic headline somehow implies a scale that's not real. In any other direction from Sierra Nevada, there's plenty of rain, water and woods. That system just provides the same for some villages on the drier zones.

Edit: OK, people disagree... so be it, but before downvoting, why don't you take a look at Google Earth and see for yourself?

[gumby]

> Not sure about "Moorish".

IMHO this is one of the few reasonable uses of this term (which has otherwise acquired a negative connotation). The Muslims who colonized Iberia were referred to as Moors because of their Maghreb origin (cf old Mauritania), which itself is the other, technical, use of the term.

And given that it’s the BBC I’d give them a pass for correct usage, even if it’s likely few in the audience will get it, with many instead enjoying the derogatory implication.

[narag]

The Muslims who colonized Iberia were referred to as Moors because of their Maghreb origin (cf old Mauritania)...

That's not the whole truth. Invaders came from far away Arabia, but they were few. From the top of my head, a few thousands.

Roman era Hispania was said to reach a million population. Not sure if that number declined during the Goths' kingdom (that were also a minority themselves) so the Arabians had to recruit 100k warriors of Maghribi origin to help them subjugate the peninsula.

When I hear "Moorish" (I'm Spanish, not an English native speaker, so not sure how they've come with that word) I suspect they're translating "un invento del tiempo de los moros" that would be more precisely translated as "an invention from the time of muslim Spain".

If it was invented here, it was a Spanish invention, no matter what the religion or ethnic group of the author was. If it was brought from outside, it would be interesting to know if it came from Arabia or the Maghreb.

I disagree that "moro" is a bad word in Spanish. It's just descriptive of NW Africa. Those countries are Morocco and Mauritania in English and I don't see their inhabitants protesting the names.

There's a weird projection phenomenom around denomyns: some people attribute ill intentions to perfectly natural names that the addressed people find fine. In Spain, I've heard someone upset about calling "Chinese" to... Chinese people and suggested calling them "Asian" or something like that because "Chinese" is derogatory. WTF?

[pvaldes]

Talking about food, in some parts of Spain "Chinos" is a very confusing word.

[PaulDavisThe1st]

New Mexico, one of the beneficaries of the acqueia system, is even more of a "true" desert than Almeria, and yet it would still not be wrong to say that the system helped make life possible here. The population density just before the Spanish arrived was not high, but it was lower than it was since they bought this water management technique to the area.

Just because such a region does not have a city like Madrid or even Albuquerque does not mean that people do not live there, nor that they are not reliant to some extent on acqueias.

[otikik]

You are simply wrong and are touching a sensitive point.

I grew up in Córdoba (which is west from Sierra Nevada). It gets to 49 centigrades in the summer. It’s not officially considered “a desert”… but it will soon. Temperature has been going up and rain went down. Fewer plants survive each summer.

This is a pattern that you see through all the Spanish south. Desertification is a big, visible problem that should not be minimized. I recommend that you apply your own advice to yourself.

[narag]

You are simply wrong

So the headline is precise and I'm wrong when I say those acequias can only provide water for small zones... and because it's a "sensitive point", nobody can disagree.

Appaling.

[otikik]

Enjoy your orchids.