Urban Water Tariffs in Spain: What Needs to Be Done? García Rubio, Miguel Ángel Ruiz-Villaverde, Alberto González Gómez, Francisco José Water pricing Urban water services Cost recovery Efficiency and sustainability Affordability Fairness and equity Spain Recently, in the context of the Integrated Water Resources Management, demand policies are playing a more important role as opposed to traditional supply policies based on the construction of large hydraulic infrastructures. In this new context, water tariffs have become an important tool in achieving economic efficiency, environmental sustainability, and social equity. This paper reviews the situation of urban water tariffs in Spain, a country subject to high water stress. It analyzes the capacity of urban water tariffs to recover service costs and to promote efficiency, sustainability, affordability, and equity. Although it has made significant progress in recent years, the Spanish urban water tariff system still faces many challenges. Many of these challenges would be better addressed by a national independent regulatory body. 2015-06-03T09:30:45Z 2015-06-03T09:30:45Z 2015 info:eu-repo/semantics/article García Rubio, M.A.; Ruiz-Villaverde, A.; González-Gómez, F. Urban Water Tariffs in Spain: What Needs to Be Done?. Water, 7(4): 1456-1479 (2015). [http://hdl.handle.net/10481/36533] 2073-4441 http://hdl.handle.net/10481/36533 10.3390/w7041456 eng info:eu-repo/semantics/openAccess MDPI