Judicial battle in Galicia to save a unique flower in the world

Among the rocks of the A Coruña municipalities of Coristanco, Santa Comba, Carballo and Tordoia, at an altitude of between 380 and 540 metres,

flourishes .

The plant, unique in the world and which has adopted the surnames of the botanist who described it for the first time in 1987, Silva Pando, has its home, its entire life, there.

The Government of Alberto Núñez Feijóo has authorized the company Greenalia, of which the former Environment Minister of the PP Beatriz Mato is a director, three wind farms in its reduced habitat.

It has declared them “of special interest” and has given them priority.

Environmentalists believe that it may mean the end of the exclusive plant and they have denounced them before the Superior Court of Justice of Galicia, which is already investigating the legality of these agreements.

With a view to removing the demands for environmental damage to the fragile and exclusive

, the Xunta has signed an agreement with the wind company, in collaboration with the University of Santiago de Compostela, for the "conservation and recovery" of the species, in which the scientist who discovered it participates.

The agreement includes the attempt to multiply the plant in vitro.

The Galician Government has not authorized Silva Pando to be interviewed by this newspaper.

The lawsuits against the three wind projects have been filed by the Fund for the Legal Defense of the Cantabrian Mountains, a group made up of environmental groups from northern Spain that fight against renewable energy macroprojects.

The partners finance legal actions through

to prevent the 433 current wind complexes in these areas from being added to the other 380 projects that are in process.

Two members of this environmental group —the Platform for the Defense of the Cantabrian Mountains (PDCC) and the Association for the Ecological Defense of Galiza (Adega)— have promoted this first complaint in Galicia.

They maintain that the three authorized Greenalia parks in A Coruña "use artificial fragmentation" and cause "great damage to the environment".

They emphasize that the projects are located "in an area proposed in 2008 and 2011 to join the Natura 2000 Network and also coincides with the small world reserve of

, classified as critically endangered and whose world population is made up of only 6,821 individuals. of this area within a radius of about 10 square kilometers.

Fins Eirexas, technical secretary of Adega, maintains that the Ministry of the Environment "was aware of the endemism of the

Silva Pando through the comprehensive plan for the recovery and conservation of plant species in danger of extinction."

The document was prepared in 2010 for the protection of this and other species, but 12 years later the Xunta "not only has not approved it, since it has not published it in the Official Gazette of Galicia, but also authorizes Greenalia, the company of his former Minister of the Environment, wind exploitation in that area and as a matter of urgency”, Eirexias underlines.

The plant was introduced in 2007, during the bipartisan PSOE-BNG government in the Xunta, in the Galician Catalog of Endangered Species (CGEA) in the category "in danger of extinction", valuing the small surface it occupies and the reduced number of stems.

“It is in the catalog but if the conservation tool to delimit the protection area is not approved, the Xunta would be an accomplice by omission of the deterioration of this plant”, affirms Eirexas.

In his opinion, the decision of the Galician Government "to fail to comply with the obligation to approve the protection" supposes an alleged crime of omission prevarication.

“We have denounced by administrative means but we do not rule out the criminal one”, points out the Adega spokesman.

The Xunta minimizes the complaint.

As the comprehensive conservation plan with which to assess projects that may affect the plant has not been approved, he states that it takes into account "all available information" about it.

And he assures that it does so "guaranteeing in any case its conservation and the connection of existing populations, and preserving its genetic diversity in a special way."

The Galician Government adds that "there are many other tools for managing and organizing the natural heritage" of threatened species beyond recovery and conservation plans.

And he cites "standards at the European, Spanish and regional level that the Xunta de Galicia integrates to achieve the conservation objectives".

The environmental groups maintain that the Xunta and Greenalia agreement in collaboration with the University of Compostela intends, through the artificial multiplication of the species "which would end its endemism", to favor a private company, that of the former Feijóo councillor.

Adega's spokesman maintains that Greenalia “counted, as he acknowledges in the environmental impact study, with privileged information: access to a document commissioned and paid for by the Xunta to carry out the conservation of plants;

information that he took advantage of to make his project attractive”.

And he screams to heaven for the in vitro reproduction project.

"The first commandment for the conservation of species is the protection of their habitat, not trying to cultivate new individuals in vitro to make a wind farm," criticizes Eirexas.

The coordinator of the Platform for the Defense of the Cantabrian Mountains, which signs the lawsuit, Ernesto Díaz, speaks along the same lines.

"I don't know if in vitro reproduction of that species is possible or, if it is, how it will adapt to the habitat."

The environmentalists' lawyer, Fernando de Abel, maintains that "the Xunta's interest in favoring Greenalia is also clear in the authorization of the artificial fragmentation of its wind project."

"Under the pretext of covid, urgent procedures and public exposure periods were reduced by half," adds De Abel.

"That's the trick, the Xunta declares them of priority interest by reducing the deadlines," he adds, referring to the administrative simplification law promoted by Feijóo in a pandemic.

The Xunta maintains that in order to declare priority and speed up the processing of a project, it must have all the "technical, legal and environmental guarantees".

The Galician Government also denies that its former Minister of the Environment has incurred in an incompatibility by now occupying a position in the promoter of the parks.

In the Galician Parliament, after complaints from the opposition, she argued that Mato did not personally sign the authorization for the project of the company in which she finally ended up.

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