Question

Passage:
For over a millennium, the agricultural sustainability of the Huerta of Valencia—a fertile alluvial plain surrounding the Turia River—has relied upon an intricate network of eight primary irrigation canals, known as acequias. Because water availability in this semi-arid Mediterranean basin is subject to acute seasonal volatility, the equitable allocation of water among thousands of smallholders required a robust governance mechanism to resolve resource disputes without the delays and financial burdens associated with formal jurisprudence. To this end, local irrigators established the Tribunal de las Aguas (Water Court), an uncodified customary tribunal that meets weekly before the Apostles' Door of Valencia Cathedral.

The operational architecture of the Tribunal is characterized by strict procedural simplicity, absolute orality, and democratic legitimacy. The court comprises eight syndics (síndicos), each democratically elected by the irrigators of one of the eight canal communities. To qualify as a syndic, an individual must be an active agricultural cultivator within that specific canal's jurisdiction; absentee landowners and non-farming legal professionals are categorically barred from holding office. During sessions conducted entirely in the Valencian language, plaintiffs and defendants present their grievances orally. No written records, legal representation by formal advocates, or evidentiary filings are permitted.

When a dispute arises—typically involving illicit water siphoning, negligence in canal maintenance, or failure to adhere to the designated irrigation rota—the syndic representing the disputants' specific canal recuses themselves from deliberating on the judgment to preserve impartiality. The remaining seven syndics interrogate the parties, assess circumstantial testimonies, and immediately deliver an unappealable verdict. Penalties are strictly pecuniary and are denominated in historical currency units, though modern monetary equivalents are collected. Crucially, the enforcement of these verdicts relies not on coercive municipal constabularies, but on the social capital of the communal irrigators: defying a ruling results in the immediate withholding of water rights, an economic sanction potent enough to ensure near-total compliance.

While contemporary legal theorists often praise the Tribunal as an exemplary model of Elinor Ostrom’s common-pool resource self-governance, institutional historians emphasize that its longevity is attributable not to structural flexibility, but to an unyielding adherence to rigid customary norms. Although minor administrative adjustments were implemented during the nineteenth-century administrative centralizations across Spain, the core adjudicative mechanics—namely, immediate verbal rulings and compulsory recusal of the presiding community’s syndic—have remained virtually immutable since the medieval Islamic caliphate laid the infrastructure’s foundations.

According to the passage, which of the following is true regarding the adjudication of disputes by the Tribunal de las Aguas?