“Water Footprint” and Territorial Sustainability in Spain María Sotelo Pérez, Adriana Galvani, and José Antonio Sotelo Navalpotro 1 Introduction The study of the Spanish water reality currently goes through our approach to the “Water Footprint”, in our case to the differences and imbalances existing in our country. The term “Virtual Water” is a current concept, which takes on considerable interest in territorial study and analysis; this has its origin in the works of Professor John Anthony Allan, elaborated in the nineties and aims to calculate the “volume of water required to produce a good or service” (Allan Allan, 1998a, b). This question, based on the need to know the demands of water resources, becomes essential, since water is an essential resource for the development of human life, as well as necessary for the production of goods and services, giving a clear example of the interest in facing the growing water demands, with which to satisfy the unlimited needs of the inhabitants Similarly, it should be noted that the term was defined by Allan (1993), while conducting a study on the importation of “Virtual Water”, used in the production of goods and services in Middle Eastern countries; this question was extremely relevant since it considered that, when exporting a certain product, it contains high levels of water resources (“Virtual Water”) that have been used in their production, showing that product-importing countries do not. They need to use national water to produce a certain good, and, therefore, they can use that water for M. S. Pérez (&) King Juan Carlos University (URJC), Paseo de los Artilleros, 38, 28032 Madrid, Spain e-mail: maria.sotelo.perez@urjc.es A. Galvani (&) University of Bologna, Via Guerrazzi, 20, 40125 Bologna, Italy e-mail: adriana.galvani@unibo.it J. A. S. Navalpotro (&) University Institute of Environmental Sciences (IUCM/UCM), C/Manuel Bartolomé Cossío, s/n, 28040 Madrid, Spain e-mail: jasotelo@ucm.es © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 W. Leal Filho et al. (eds.), Sustainable Policies and Practices in Energy, Environment and Health Research, World Sustainability Series, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-86304-3_35 591