Between Private and Public: Water Supply Infrastructures in Portugal in the First Half of the Twentieth Century. An Attempted Comparison with Spain

Abstract

The new water supply and sanitation services, considered key elements of city modernisation, were part of the sanitary revolution and a response to criticisms and complaints from urban populations confronted with unhealthy city life. In the framework of the regulatory model, public authorities created the appropriate legal and institutional conditions for the construction and management of these new utilities. In many cases it was they who managed the new infrastructures, either directly or through municipalisation. The purpose of this chapter is to analyse the history of the establishment of modern water supply infrastructures in Portugal in the first half of the twentieth century. We focus on the solutions adopted for the management of water supply networks and the legal and institutional framework that led to them. Finally, based on the same chronology and perspective of analysis, we attempt to compare the Portuguese and Spanish cases.