The award recognizes the value of this applied R&D infrastructure, which has positioned the Canary Islands as a global benchmark in desalination with the lowest energy consumption ever recorded in a seawater desalination plant.
The Juan de León y Castillo Awards, named in honor of the distinguished engineer from Gran Canaria, recognize careers, projects, and engineering initiatives linked to the development and transformation of the archipelago.
The Instituto Tecnológico de Canarias (ITC), a public company attached to the Regional Ministry of Universities, Science and Innovation of the Government of the Canary Islands, has received the Juan de León y Castillo Award for the DESALRO 2.0® project, a technological solution developed in collaboration with Canary Islands industrial companies that has become a world leader in energy efficiency applied to seawater desalination.
The 3rd edition of the Juan de León y Castillo Awards, featuring three special mentions and four main awards, was held at the Museo Elder in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, in an event chaired by the Regional Minister of Public Works, Housing and Mobility of the Government of the Canary Islands, Pablo Rodríguez. These biennial awards aim to recognize professional careers, projects, and outstanding civil engineering infrastructures that serve as significant references in the development of the Canary Islands.
The ITC’s Executive Managing Director, Guayarmina Peña, received the award granted to the DESALRO 2.0® project from the president of the College of Civil Engineers, Canals and Ports, Miguel Ángel Carrillo.
During her speech, Peña emphasized that this recognition highlights “engineering that responds to territorial challenges.” In this regard, she recalled that DESALRO 2.0® was born precisely from the challenge of “making seawater desalination more efficient.” In the Canary Islands, generated water is increasingly becoming a critical resource and a basic condition for development, and optimizing the process of obtaining drinking water from the sea means “advancing sustainability, water security, and resilience.” She also stated that DESALRO 2.0® is “innovation developed in the Canary Islands,” the result of years of research, testing, and specialized expertise from the ITC team, together with close collaboration with local industry, especially Elmasa and Canaragua.
Peña also recalled that the project received certification from Guinness World Records for achieving the lowest energy consumption ever recorded in a seawater desalination plant, at 1.794 kilowatt-hours per cubic meter. This international accreditation adds to recognitions such as the Europa Se Siente 2024 Award, granted by Spain’s Ministry of Finance to the best national project carried out with European funds in the Water category, and the Honorary Mention for Innovation at the AEDyR Awards 2025, granted by the Spanish Association for Desalination and Reuse.
The DESALRO 2.0® project received funding from the Government of the Canary Islands through the Canary Islands Agency for Research, Innovation and Information Society (ACIISI), via REACT funds under the Next Generation EU instrument. This support made it possible to transform years of work into a real infrastructure located at the ITC facilities in Pozo Izquierdo and linked to the DESAL+ Living Lab platform. Also supported by the IDIWATER project, co-funded by the European Union through the Interreg MAC 2021–2027 programme.
DESALRO 2.0® is an experimental reverse osmosis desalination plant designed at industrial scale, with the capacity to produce 2,500 cubic meters of desalinated water per day. Its design combines optimized hydraulic solutions, high-efficiency equipment, advanced energy recovery, and a modular configuration that facilitates replication and scalability. This advanced Canary Islands-designed system is already being implemented in operational desalination plants and has also been replicated in around ten containerized systems currently being deployed throughout the archipelago to increase water availability for agricultural irrigation in response to water scarcity.
The plant is part of the infrastructure associated with DESAL+ Living Lab, a public-private R&D platform focused on demonstrating advanced desalination and water reuse solutions in the Canary Islands. This environment allows technology to be tested and validated under real conditions, consolidating the archipelago’s role as a natural laboratory for developing sustainability and water resilience solutions.
With this new recognition, DESALRO 2.0® highlights the role of public R&D, through the ITC, in transforming challenges into innovation and knowledge into opportunities. It also demonstrates that the Canary Islands water industry is capable of positioning itself at the forefront of advanced desalination and generating high-impact technological solutions transferable to other island territories or regions facing water scarcity.
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