As tourists savored icy granitas under hibiscus trees and swam in the cool Mediterranean Sea, in the farmlands of southern Sicily, among hillsides so scorched they resembled desert dunes, a farmer watched recently as his cows headed to the slaughterhouse.
After months of drought, he didn’t have any water or food to give them.
“It’s devastating,” said the farmer, Lorenzo Iraci Sareri, as tears fell on his tanned face, lined by 40 years of labor pasturing cows. “I have never seen something like this.”
Parts of southern Italy and other Mediterranean regions, including Greece and southeastern Spain, are experiencing one of their worst droughts in decades. It is particularly devastating, experts say, because the lack of rainfall has been made worse by the higher temperatures caused by climate change.
Artificial basins where animals used to drink offer little but cracked earth. Wheat ears are small and hollow. Pergusa Lake in central Sicily, part of a natural reserve, resembles a pale, dry crater.
But for many of these regions, the summer is also peak season for tourism, a key economic lifeline that the authorities fear is being threatened by news of water scarcity, and that they are trying to protect.
“We are forced to sacrifice the damage to agriculture, but we have to try not to damage tourism because it would be even worse,” said Salvatore Cocina, the head of Sicily’s civil protection.
He added that agriculture still accounts for the vast majority of water use, with the general population using just a fraction of it, even when it includes millions of tourists during the summer.
The authorities said they prioritized providing water to hospitals, to businesses that produce key assets like oxygen, and to vulnerable segments of the population. But also to hotels.
“The tourists don’t notice” the drought, Elvira Amata, Sicily’s top tourism official, promised.
Outside five-star resorts, in the arid South of the island, the signs were everywhere.
In Agrigento, which overlooks a valley holding the ruins of several Greek temples, the authorities are rationing water. Some homes on the outskirts have not received any in weeks.
Water scarcity has meant that a small number of small bed-and-breakfasts also had to pull some rooms from the market, or redirect custumers to other hotels, said Francesco Picarella, the head of Federalberghi, Italy’s main hotels association, in Agrigento. But what hurt most were news media reports warning that tourists were “running away” because a lack of water, he said.
Since the reports started coming out, bookings dropped significantly, Mr. Picarella said. The region immediately responded by summoning officials and urging them to protect the tourist season.
The mayor of Agr...