In the nineteenth century, Spanish irrigation was studied by a number of British and French engineers, who sought to acquire knowledge that could be applied to India and Algeria. In their reports, they said that Spanish irrigation communities were run by the irrigators themselves in a totally democratic way, which was not true. Although such ideas had hardly any practical consequences in colonial India and Algeria, they did have important repercussions in Spain, where the irrigation institutions came to resemble the image they had been given by the reporters, with the best results. Through the work of Elinor Ostrom, the myth created by the nineteenth‐century reporters has also eventually become an argument in favour of irrigation projects in today's developing countries being managed by water users’ associations.