[248] In time of drought, the town officials of Valencia exercised their authority in order to establish a uniform irrigation policy over the entire huerta. They enforced the turns with the upstream towns and established crop priorities for all the canals while taking care not to interfere with the actual internal administration of any one of them.

By reason of the great droughts which have long continued and persist at present, the water of the Guadalaviar River is diminished to such an extent that the turns set up for the diversion dams and canals which draw from the said river do not suffice, nor can they suffice, the irrigation of all the fields of their systems, especially because of the rice being grown there, [which] by its nature has frequent need of water for irrigation.

For this reason, conflicts and strife have arisen among the irrigators of each canal, and scandal could now ensue. Therefore the [Valencia] council, deciding and agreeing to put an end to conflicts and scandal and to give norm and form to the cequiers of the said canals in regard to the distribution or partition of the water of the canal of each one of them for the days of their turns during the present time of need, provides and ordains and holds as good that each one of the said cequiers give and authorize. . .the water of his canal, from first to last [in priority], first to bread grains and vegetables, next to grapevines, next to fallow fields about to be sown, and last to rice, according to the greater [249] need of each of these things. . . . Likewise, [if] . . . any canal in its turn cannot supply all of its irrigation district and has to deprive [some of it], let it deprive the last of the said things, according to what is lowest in the order.

1. AMV, Manuals de Consell, 17 fol. 62r (July 18, 1376). "De forma de regar los esplets."