The Water Court of the Vega of Valencia It is, without doubt, one of the most representative and valuable manifestations of the culture and traditional ways of life of the Valencians, and enjoys a wide degree of local, national and international recognition, therefore, in accordance with the provisions of article 45 of Law 4/1998, of June 11, on Valencian Cultural Heritage, proceed its declaration as Asset of Intangible Cultural Interest , 26 May 2006. In November 2009 it was declared Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

The Water Tribunal of the Vega de Valencia is made up of the Trustees who preside over eight of the Irrigation Communities that regulate the area of The Huerta of Valencia closer to the capital of the Turia, a space traditionally known as the Vega de Valencia, namely: Tormos, Rascaña and Mestalla on the northern bank of the River Turia; Quart, Benàger-Faitanar, Favara, Mislata and Rovella in the south.

The Trustees are democratically elected within each Community of Irrigators by vote of its members meeting at the General Meeting and must be farmers, owners and direct cultivators of their land, also chosen to enjoy a high moral and cultural consideration among the commoners, an aspect that reinforces the authority of the Court.

The Trustees of the Water Court de la Vega de Valencia are, therefore, depositories of an exemplary corpus of knowledge and sociability patterns, transmitted orally and empirically from degeneration to generation, above the vicissitudes of history; and constitute living proof of the capacity of human groups to democratically organize complex and extensive technological systems from the social base, through solidarity and joint effort.

The Court has a dual function, legal and governmental-administrative, aimed at the proper functioning of the complex Andalusian raigambre irrigation system that articulates the Huerta closest to the city of Valencia, La Vega.

From a legal point of view, the function of the Court is to settle conflicts over the use of water and the system of irrigation channels between the irrigators of the communities represented, and between these and third parties outside the communities.

From the governmental-administrative point of view, the Court knows and deals with the issues of the communities that make it up, and ensures the correct distribution of irrigation water that constitutes the historical endowment of the communities represented, especially for the use of the waters of the Benagéber reservoir.

The Water Tribunal of the Plain of Valencia was, during the almost three centuries mediated between the Nueva Planta decrees of 1707 and the Statute of Autonomy of 1982, the only legal, administrative and governmental body whose procedure and whose resolutions were expressed entirely in the Valencian language.

The conservation of the Water Tribunal of the Plain of Valencia is subject to the maintenance of the Irrigation Communities, and the practice of traditional irrigated agriculture in the Huerta de Valencia, so the Generalitat, in coordination with the local entities involved and the Irrigation Communities, will arbitrate the appropriate measures to guarantee the survival of this ancestral institution.