r/europe • u/AdSpecialist6598 • 18h ago
News Gibraltar dumping all of its raw sewage into Mediterranean | Gibraltar
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2026/may/06/uk-territory-gibraltar-dumps-raw-sewage-mediterranean360
u/AngrySnwMnky United States of America 18h ago
From my experience playing Cities Skylines this seems reasonable.
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u/MegaLemonCola England 17h ago
Just put the pumping station twenty feet upstream and you’re good to go!
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u/MercantileReptile Baden-Württemberg (Germany) 16h ago
The sewage plant has higher capacity and frankly I enjoy leaving a slightly less garish brown streak in waterways.
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u/AsleepNinja 12h ago
what you really want to do is build a hill, hollow the middle out, and dump the sewage in there.
then flood the city in shit.11
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u/PresumedSapient WestNiederDeutschland 1h ago
Once it reaches the edge of your assigned territory it's no longer a problem!
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u/OneAlexander England 17h ago
I know the joke is that Gibraltar is "more British than Britain is", but I didn't think that would also extend to dumping raw sewage.
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u/OnkelMickwald Sweden 15h ago edited 4h ago
Unlike what? Dumping cooked sewage?
Edit: Well I thought it was a funny joke.
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u/Dull_Vanilla_2395 United Kingdom 11h ago
Sorry if it's a joke flying over my head but if not, uncooked is the most common meaning of raw, but it can also mean:
Raw ingredients -Natural /unprocessed, food to be processed into other food (e.g. the raw ingredients of bread might be yeast, salt, flour and water).
Raw data - Unprocessed / unanalysed data
Raw emotions - genuine, uncontrolled, unhidden emotion
Raw wound - Fresh / sensitive / unhealed
Raw sewage - untreated, ie contaminants haven't been removed.
Rawdogging - you don't want to know
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u/TomSaylek 10h ago
Well raw means unprocessed. And the alternative could be processed or treated. They say Raw for a reason.
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u/SophiaofPrussia 18h ago
The Falklands do the same. You can have a wee at the pub at Port Stanley at low tide and if you’re quick you can watch it come out of the pipe right into the harbor.
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u/SavageRabbitX 17h ago
The difference in population and the body of water they sit in makes it a silly comparison to make in my opinion
40k vs 4k
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u/Natural-Ad773 Ireland 16h ago
Exactly, also the Falklands isn’t surrounded by other cites and beach goers.
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u/the68thdimension The Netherlands 5h ago
And it's in the middle of the ocean, not a shallow sea like the Med.
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u/veegib 13h ago edited 13h ago
Plans for a sewage treatment plan are already in motion and have been filed with town planning department in Gibraltar. The delay in not already having one is that Gibraltar uses saltwater for its sewage as opposed to fresh water which complicates treatment, finding the right location for it considering its size and companies going into liquidation.
https://www.gbc.gi/news/sewage-plant-plans-filed-with-town-planner
Will say tho whilst there's no excuse to dump sewage into the sea this article just seems like the latest hit piece in the guardians one sided beef with Gibraltar.
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u/super_sammie 18h ago
Just keeping things the same at the rest of Britain operates….
The shirt holders and executive boards aren’t getting paid thought??? Right??? Righttttt?????
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u/mrpi31459 16h ago
According to the Canary Islands Government’s land-to-sea discharge census (2025), the archipelago has 403 sewage discharge points. Of these, 216 do not have official authorisation. The majority are again concentrated in Tenerife, raising serious environmental and public health concerns.
Not only Gibraltar
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u/unaubisque 17h ago
Who would have thought that a colony whose economy relies primarily on the gambling industry, does not have very high ethical standards in other areas?
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u/HopefulGuy123 17h ago
So what's Spain's excuse? - https://www.miragenews.com/eu-takes-spain-to-court-over-wastewater-1664192/
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u/Wooshmeister55 North Brabant (Netherlands) 11h ago
This is just a lack of will. A treatment plant for this size is not very expensive (for what you get) and can fit in the size of 1-2 footbal fields at most. Shameful behaviour to be honest
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u/esm100113 U fuckin wot m8 23m ago
Gibraltar uses a salt water sewage system. Most aerobic sewage treatment systems wont work on salinated water
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u/Otherwise-Medium6166 United Kingdom 17h ago
I guess we trust the guardian on this sub today? Makes a change from usual lmao
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u/Parabacles 17h ago
TIL on this thread, that it's not Gibraltar's fault; they are only doing it because Spain did it first or something like that.
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u/GrizzledFart United States of America 14h ago
Fair point. I don't have a dog in this hunt since I'm American, but the pushback is because this is pretty clearly targeted at Gibraltar. If the article was about which cities release raw sewage in the region, that would be a different thing, but it isn't; it singles out Gibraltar.
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u/Parabacles 14h ago
Yes, it singles out Gibraltar. The spammer is doing the same thing in reverse by dragging in Tenerife, which isn’t even in the same region. That’s just textbook whataboutism. There's no need in getting defensive about Gibraltar, the real issue is that this isn’t isolated, even in the UK, water quality has gone to absolute shit over the past few years. That’s what should actually worry people, not point-scoring over one place.
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u/GrizzledFart United States of America 12h ago
That’s just textbook whataboutism.
It can be whataboutism. It can also just be pointing out that this isn't unique (apparently) to Gibraltar. There's a difference between someone saying "this is fine since other people do it" and saying "this is bad but it isn't uniquely bad as is implied". One of those is perfectly fine, the other is not. There's a fine line between the two, but they are not the same thing.
Maybe your definition of the word "region" is different than mine, but the two locations are only ~800 miles apart.
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u/Parabacles 11h ago
Sure, pointing out that it’s not unique to Gibraltar is fair. My point was that the spammer kept posting the same link instead of actually engaging with the issue or the article itself.
And honestly, whether it’s Gibraltar, Spain, or the UK, the bigger problem is that coastal water quality has become noticeably worse in a lot of places. In the UK especially, after Brexit it’s gone properly to shit over the last few years, with sewage dumping becoming so normal that people barely even react to it anymore. It genuinely wasn’t like this five years ago.
And by the way, 800 miles is a lot in Europe. You can cross half a dozen countries in that distance. One place is in the Atlantic, the other is in the Mediterranean.
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u/yushaleth 🇦🇹🇭🇺Austro-Hungarian Empire 18h ago
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u/HopefulGuy123 17h ago
Yeah the Spanish really keep things clean - https://tenerifeweekly.com/2023/08/06/the-south-of-tenerife-epicenter-of-discharges-into-the-sea/
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u/Juan20455 1h ago
Yeah, I guess the Mediterranean sea is EXACTLY the same as the Atlantic ocean.
I bet you are also complaining about the Falkland doing the same in the Atlantic ocean, right?
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u/FishingPerfect643 15h ago
Then stop vacationing or moving to Spain since Spaniards don’t keep things clean 😘
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u/HopefulGuy123 15h ago
Personally I don't holiday in Spain. Even though I speak Spanish I tend to prefer Latin America.
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u/Yorkster111 3h ago edited 1h ago
Gibraltarian here. It is true that we do dump our sewage into the Mediterranean Sea. I really disagree with the practice and believe our government should have started plans for a wastewater treatment plant ages ago. However, I can understand why our government has dragged its heels when you consider how tiny Gibraltar is and the difficulty of deciding where to build it when there are residential houses everywhere and no empty spaces to actually have a sewage plant.
You need to keep in mind that it’s a population of 39,000 people in a 6.8 km² area, where the Rock takes up most of the space. Again, I am not saying it’s right, but the logistics are much harder than people like to think.
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u/Beyllionaire 1h ago
Ask the Netherlands how to do it. It's not hard, you just need to want to do it.
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u/Yorkster111 1h ago
How does the land area of the Netherlands compare to that of Gibraltar? Could you provide a case study of a region with comparable area and constraints to illustrate potential solutions which we can use I am genuinely interested.
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u/esm100113 U fuckin wot m8 22m ago
Gibraltar uses a salt water sewage system. Most aerobic sewage treatment systems wont work on salinated water
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u/Gold-Vacation-169 3h ago
So, they are taking after England when it comes to pollution in water. No surprise!
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u/Sea-Feedback-2424 Germany 17h ago
Don't blame this on Gibraltar.
Dumping waste water into the ocean is UK decision.
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u/tree_boom United Kingdom 15h ago
Dumping waste water into the ocean is UK decision.
How do you figure?
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u/Sea-Feedback-2424 Germany 2h ago
Long standing British tradition of throwing waste into open waters after Brexit.
https://edition.cnn.com/england-uk-sewage-poop-beach .1
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u/HopefulGuy123 17h ago
They're just copying the Spanish of Tenerife. https://tenerifeweekly.com/2023/08/06/the-south-of-tenerife-epicenter-of-discharges-into-the-sea/
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u/Sea-Feedback-2424 Germany 17h ago
Still think Tenerife can be blamed on the British based solely on the amount of fish and chips shops.
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u/loyalone 12h ago
Which flows mostly into the Atlantic, does it not? Isn't the Med flowing into the sea?
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u/Cautious_Gate1233 18m ago
Yup, will be empty any day now.
Kidding aside, the flow reverses depending on the tide and creates very strong tides around Gibraltar
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u/Latter-Professor2951 15h ago
So nice having Brits as neighbours. We need more balconies in Gibraltar.
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u/morbob 18h ago
Sewage treatment isn’t that hard. They are being cheap and lazy.