At the Sau reservoir, teams on small boats are busy hauling in fish using nets. Their aim is to remove them before they die and rot in the water, making it unfit for human consumption. The water level here has dropped so low – below 10 % of the reservoir’s capacity – that the water is already at risk of being contaminated by silt. While the fish are being removed, the remaining water from the Sau reservoir is being released downstream into another reservoir. “We are trying to transfer the water as quickly as possible because the quality right now in the winter was good, [but] in the spring it will be very, very bad and we are trying to extract all the fish we find there,” said Samuel Reyes, director of the Catalan Water Agency (ACA). The Sau reservoir, located 100km inland from Barcelona, has supplied water to the city and other towns in the northeastern region of Catalonia for half a century. But in recent months it has become the most visible symbol of the worst drought the area has ever experienced, thanks to the now-infamous sight of the 11th-century church of Sant Romà de Sau, which was flooded when the reservoir was created in 1962. During times of heavy rain, the structure, which was located in the reservoir, was below water level, but now stands several metres above the surface, surrounded by parched earth.