The publication of this issue of Hydrolink coincides with the celebration of the one-hundred-year anniversary of the establishment of river basin authorities in Spain, the first country to introduce nation wide water management at the river basin scale.T he concept of river basin management began to emerge in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when technological developments made possible the construction of large dams and related water infrastructure. The efficient use of water resources in basins with multiple projects required coordination in the con struction and operation of infrastructure across entire basins.