Teodoro Estrela is a doctor and engineer of Roads, Canals, and Ports from the Polytechnic University of Valencia and has served as a civil servant of the General State Administration since 1989. Prior to his appointment as the new general director for water he worked at the CEDEX Hydrographic Studies Centre, where he was technical-scientific coordinator of the Hydrology Area and collaborated with the European Environment Agency as a member of the European Topic Centre for Inland Waters. In the Júcar Hydrographic Confederation he has held the positions of deputy director and head of the Hydrological Planning Office.

He has also served as deputy general director of Planning and Sustainable Use of Water of the Ministry of the Environment, and this work within the water administration has provided him with the opportunity to serve in academia, since 2005, as an associate professor at the Polytechnic University of Valencia, where he has directed five doctoral theses and published numerous articles in scientific journals. He has also served as permanent technical secretary of the Mediterranean Network of Basin Organisations and recently as president of the Water Committee of the World Council of Civil Engineers.

Water Challenges in Spain

Spain’s climate and hydrological variability together with expected climate change scenarios requires us to improve our response and adaptation capacity to achieve greater water security. It is necessary to address the multiple challenges in water management in a gradual and coordinated manner, in the context of the important social, environmental and institutional transformations that have occurred in recent years.
Such a response complies with Spain’s aim to change our economy towards a production model focused on the protection of people and the environment, in line with EU’s Green Deal, jointly working towards achieving closer coordination with relevant administrations in water supply and sanitation as well as in agriculture and livestock.