Beyond the publiceprivate controversy in urban water management in Spain Francisco Gonz  alez-G  omez a, * , Miguel A. García-Rubio a , Jesús Gonz  alez-Martínez b a Department of Applied Economics and Institute of Water Research, Campus de Cartuja s/n, Faculty of Economics and Business, University of Granada, 18071 Granada, Spain b Diputaci on de Granada, C/ Periodista Barrios Talavera 1,18014 Granada, Spain article info Article history: Received 2 January 2014 Received in revised form 21 July 2014 Accepted 21 July 2014 Available online Keywords: Urban water Privatization Remunicipalization Institutional changes Spain abstract This paper critically analyzes the Spanish privatization model of urban water management implemented over the last three decades. The high concentration of private participation in the industry, the absence of competition, and regulatory deficiencies appear to have put the interests of water customers at risk. Improvement of governance is not guaranteed simply by changing water-system management from public to private. In Spain, an array of institutional reforms are needed to rationalize a change in man- agement structure for this service, reorganize technical operations, improve the administrative frame- work, increase transparency, and promote citizen participation. This paper moves beyond the simple publiceprivate controversy and contributes to the literature by using fieldwork conducted by the authors to assess private participation in the management of urban water services in Spain; by identifying gaps in the privatization processes as well as failures in the industry; and, above all, by proposing reforms to Spain's institutional and regulatory frameworks for the industry. © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction In the 1980s, a “conservative revolution” started in the UK and US that promoted the deregulation of markets and the privatization of monopolies that were previously in public hands. This wave of privatization also extended to local public services, and some countries facilitated private participation in the management of urban water services. In 1989, England and Wales decided on complete privatization of the industry. Today, in France, Chile or the Czech Republic, private companies supply urban water services to a significant proportion of the population. However, private partici- pation remains fairly discrete or even nonexistent in a majority of countries that consider public management to be the best option to guarantee universal access to water and to avoid situations of abuse through market dominance (Thomas et al., 2012). Spain has not been immune to this paradigmatic shift. Since 1985 Spanish legislation has enabled privatization of urban water services. Since then, a favorable institutional framework for the privatization process of local public services has been built. As a consequence, particularly since the last decade of the 20th century, there has been a marked expansion of privatization throughout an industry that generated revenues of 5081 million Euros from urban water supply in 2010 (AEAS, 2012). Nevertheless, in Spain the actual extent of private sector participation in the urban water industry is unknown. All studies dealing with this issue repeatedly use the data provided by the biannual surveys produced by the Spanish Association of Water Supply and Sanitation (AEAS). These surveys are not a census: they do not reach 40% of the population and 88% of the Spanish mu- nicipalities. The first contribution of this paper is to ascertain the true level of private participation in the management of the urban water service in Spain. Three decades since the start of the wave of privatization, intense debate rages over whether private participation in urban water management is generally positive or negative. Nations such as the Netherlands and Uruguay have forbidden water service privatization by law. In other cases, there has been a reversal of the decision to privatize, and the municipality has retaken control of a previously privatized service. Such a reversion has happened in municipalities in developed countries (such as Paris, Hannover, Atlanta, Berlin and Budapest), as well as in developing countries (Jakarta and Cochabamba), as a result of dissatisfaction with the private management company (Bakker, 2007; Pigeon et al., 2012; * Corresponding author. Tel.: þ34 958 244 046; fax: þ34 958 249 380. E-mail addresses: fcojose@ugr.es (F. Gonz alez-G omez), magrubio@ugr.es (M.A. García-Rubio), jesus.gonzalez@dipgra.es (J. Gonz alez-Martínez). Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Utilities Policy journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jup http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jup.2014.07.004 0957-1787/© 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Utilities Policy 31 (2014) 1e9