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Just as in other parts of Spain, the Guadalhorce Valley, Málaga, has a long history of policies based on ‘hydraulic utopianism’ (regenerationist and Franco-ist), bent on ‘reorganizing’ political, geographic, and human nature. Residents of the neighboring sub-basin, the Río Grande valley, have seen how these policies, designed to transfer rural water to modern urban centers, have turned the Guadalhorce hydrosocial territory into a ‘hydraulic dystopia’. In this article, we examine how Río Grande valley residents mobilized to maintain control over the development and use of their resources, livelihoods, and knowledge systems, when modernist-urbanist policies planned to take their water from a major dam on the Río Grande. Interviewing actors at different scales we examined how this anti-dam movement organized massively in a creative, multi-actor, and multi-scale network. Our results also show that this unified, successful fight against the ‘common enemy’, the mega-hydraulic construction, has become more complex, as threats crop up not only from the ‘city over there’ but also from ‘internal’ hydro-territorial transformations. These sprout from policies to modernize traditional irrigation systems, supposedly to ‘save water’, but critical voices assume that it is all about passing on the ‘surplus’ to Málaga city, or using that water to expand agribusiness. We conclude that the challenge lies in critically integrating multiple forms of knowledge, stakeholders, and scales to both defend collective water management and creatively construct anti-hegemonic alternatives.

O presente artigo faz uma avaliação da hidreletricidade no Brasil a partir da sua importância na matriz elétrica do país, do caráter prioritário que a geração hidrelétrica assume na gestão dos recursos hídricos, e dos impasses e controvérsias do ponto de vista social e ambiental decorrentes da implantação e operação dos empreendimentos hidrelétricos. Para ilustrar as questões levantadas com relação às grandes usinas, são referenciados dois estudos de caso - a UHE Tijuco Alto, em processo de licenciamento ambiental pelo Ibama; e a UHE Barra Grande, cujo processo de licenciamento foi marcado por uma série de irregularidades. Por fim, são apontadas possíveis alternativas para a geração hidrelétrica, em particular a repotenciação de usinas e um maior incentivo às pequenas centrais hidrelétricas.This article assesses hydroelectricity in Brazil according to its importance as one of the country’s main energy sources and also to its social and environmental impasses and controversies derived from the implantation and operation of hydroelectric undertakings. In order to illustrate the questions related to large power plants that are brought up along the article, two case reports are presented: Tijuco Alto Hydroelectric Power Plant, which is going through Ibama’s (Brazilian Institute for the Environment and Renewable Natural Resources) environmental license process; and Barra Grande Hydroelectric Power Plant, whose environmental license process has been affected by several irregularities. Finally, possible alternatives for hydroelectric production are pointed out, particularly power plant re-potentiation and a greater incentive to undersized hydroelectric plants.