The orange and white Sichem Defender came from the city of Tarragona in Spain's northeast with 19,000 cubic metres (just under five million gallons) of water, enough to meet the daily consumption needs of 170,000 people.

In total six ships, including four water tankers which are due to arrive from the south of France, will make 63 monthly deliveries of water to Barcelona, Spain's second-largest city and a top European tourist destination.

Barcelona and the surrounding area's 5.5 million inhabitants should receive 1,660,000 cubic metres of drinkable water every month, six percent of their total water intake as part of this 22 million euro-a-month project (34 million dollars), according to the regional government's environment authorities.

Regional authorities said they will renew their three-month contracts with the three maritime water-suppliers if necessary.

The deliveries are part of emergency measures to tackle the water shortage in the semi-autonomous northeastern region which is facing its worst drought in decades.

Last month the Spanish parliament approved a 180-million-euro project to channel water from the Ebro river by pipe from Tarragona to Barcelona.

"If we don't do anything and if it doesn't rain, five million residents of the region of Barcelona will not have anything to drink in October," Deputy Prime Minister Maria Teresa Fernandez de la Vega said at the time.

The Catalan government is meanwhile building a sea water desalination plant which will produce 60 million cubic metres (230 billion gallons) of drinkable water per year, enough to meet consumption needs for two months.

It will be one of Europe's biggest desalination plants, due to be completed this month.

In February Catalan officials put water use restrictions in place, such as turning off beach showers and not allowing large swimming pools to be filled, to face up to the water shortage as warmer weather loomed.

The weekend saw the strongest rainfall at this time of year since 1930, raising water reserves to 26.9 percent. But as summer nears, this is still not enough to fill water shortages in the region, authorities said.

Some business and political leaders criticised the decision to import water by boat, saying it would hurt the region's image.

The secretary general of the Catalan Federation of Commerce, Miguel Angel Fraile, said the measure was "alarmist" and hurt regional "prestige".

"The arrival of a boat full of water is the image of the absolute failure of government administrations which neither Barcelona nor Catalonia deserves," he told reporters.

Environmentalists estimate that leaking pipes in Spain allow about 20 percent of the water they transport to go to waste.

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