Andalusian mayors rebel against the avalanche of 1,200 renewable energy parks

“From our viewpoint in the Sierra de las Nieves National Park, the photovoltaic panels projected in the nearby town, Alozaina, will be seen.

The landscape impact is evident”.

José María Rodríguez, mayor of Yunquera (Málaga), is outraged with the project that plans to stain the green postcard pregnant with Spanish firs that can be seen from his town, in the heart of the sixteenth national park, which for only a year has enjoyed the maximum figure of environmental protection in Spain.

There will be 130 hectares of plaques, the surface of 182 reflecting soccer fields in this valuable mountainous panorama.

The investment fever of renewable energy mega-parks affects the entire rural world in Spain, but in Andalusia it has skyrocketed and there are already 1,200 projects planned with a power of 25 gigas [each giga is equivalent to 1,000 megawatts], according to figures from the Board .

The Andalusian Government is in a hurry to visa them and only in this legislature does it want to release 12 gigabytes under the premise of the energy transition that combats climate change.

The rain of solar panels and windmills will occupy a large part of the Andalusian rural landscape and 70 mayors of affected municipalities have risen up against this wave, demanding transparency and order from the Board in the planning of parks, often approved behind their backs, since they did not have time to review the Official State Gazette every morning and thus present allegations.

Among the aldermen (9% of the 785 Andalusians) eight from the PP stand out, which governs the Board with an absolute majority.

"I don't work as a party, I think about the good of my municipality and the Board throws the ball from one place to another to give explanations," protests the mayor of Yunquera (2,400 inhabitants).

In parallel, the objective is to avoid fiascoes like Iberdrola's in the largest photovoltaic plant in Europe, in Usagre (Badajoz),

Nine months before the next municipal elections, a crack opens up in the Board with these 70 municipalities that add up to 252,000 voters and that can drag a tide with weight in the polls because together with Jerez, which was left out due to a formal defect, number half a million people.

The mayors have presented a Legislative Initiative of the City Councils (ILA) before the Parliament, admitted for processing a week ago, to force the debate of the political forces and portray the Ministry of Industrial Policy and Energy, responsible for the lack of transparency denounced .

The main complaint of the 70 mayors is that the parks generate employment only during the two years of construction and, after uprooting the olive groves, vineyards or cork oaks, they hardly need a couple of workers to monitor the facilities, which will cause a transformed landscape, without shade crops for at least three decades, and an evident uprooting.

Tree felling last Friday in Cartaojal (Antequera) to install photovoltaic plants.

PACO BRIDGES

The Autonomous Chamber has sent this week the initiative to the 785 Town Councils so that they can weigh whether they want to join the petition: "The legislative initiative does not go against the benefits of anyone, but rather in defense of the natural environment of Andalusia against those who they want to destroy it, requesting Parliament to plan to preserve our protected spaces”, reads the proposal, sponsored by the Energy and Territory Alliance (Aliente), which brings together 206 environmental and social organizations.

The Ministry has refused to answer the questions of this newspaper and alleges in writing that the City Councils can present allegations to the projects and that, ultimately, they are the ones that grant the building licenses.

Parallel to local opposition, a key problem with this avalanche of projects is their impact on the environment, especially wildlife.

The viewer to locate the critical areas of the Board includes the network of protected areas, habitats and the Natura 2000 Network, but it lacks the critical areas of steppe birds, which nest in cereal fields with rain-fed crops, a favorite target of the renewable mega-parks.

Environmentalists have already initiated several contentious-administrative proceedings against certain plants for ignoring large birds of prey and necrophagous and steppe birds.

“I have come to see a study of the condition of birds from a consultant with 170 species identified and another with only 46 in the same area.

And of course, you laugh”, confides an environmental consultant who requires anonymity.

A year and a half ago, the Board published its viewer to map the critical areas of ecological damage that should not be occupied by wind turbines and solar panels, but after a tense meeting in which the regional employers' association for renewables, Caner, demanded their withdrawal, the Executive eliminated the viewer of your web page.

He then commissioned a new map from an independent expert, but it has been hidden in a drawer for a year.

Poster in Cartaojal (Antequera, Málaga) against the renewable energy plants next to the town.

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The problem concerns the Andalusian countryside as well as empty Spain, many of whose territories claim compensation for sacrificing their landscape.

In certain European countries, the large electricity companies are obliged to have a 20% share of local communities as shareholders, others pay a fee of 30% of their billing for the development of the territory, and in some affected regions, the price of electricity is lower for residents with nearby mega-parks, recalls the deputy for Teruel Existen, Tomás Guitarte.

“That would guarantee that the reception of renewables is done willingly, because it would compensate for the territorial wound and would contribute to development.

Now they have the disadvantage and no advantage”, criticizes him.

The Ministry for the Ecological Transition alleges that in its last contest for 5.8 gigabytes last June, it included benefits for companies that generated direct jobs in the areas, had the participation of local investors, reduced expropriations and added income reinvestment mechanisms in the territory.

Stuck on big projects

The avalanche of projects has caused a tremendous jam in those of more than 50 megawatts, supported by investment funds and managed by the ministry.

The solution came with Royal Decree 6/2022 on urgent measures for the war in Ukraine, which in March eliminated the public participation process and the possibility for citizens to claim, in addition to suppressing environmental assessments for projects with low and moderate ecological condition.

Faced with the commotion and criticism, the Government finally backed down and limited the freedom to dispense with the environmental assessment to areas of low sensitivity, excluding those of moderate sensitivity.

Public participation was rescued, but to place it in the process once it has been processed in the ministry.

“The decree is an environmental attack, but above all an attack against democracy.

Now the official who signs the environmental declaration will ignore that he is at risk of committing prevarication because we cannot inform him with our allegations, and thus the Government eliminates that problem”, criticizes Luis Bolonio, a biologist from Aliente.

This organization criticizes that since the beginning of the energy strategy in February 2019, the ministry and the autonomies have avoided public participation in the planning to locate the mega-plants, which would have agreed on a social agreement.

“We have been denouncing for a year that we will become the pile of Europe.

At least now neither Pedro Sánchez nor Ursula von der Leyen is hiding it”, he adds.

In parallel, the Platform for the Defense of the Cantabrian Mountains has sued 10 days ago before the Supreme Court the Integrated National Energy and Climate Plan (2021-2030) of the ministry, given the deterioration of biodiversity that it implies.

"The lack of public participation has given rise to a confrontation between promoters, administrations and the population of that empty Spain, which is the most affected by large facilities, and which should have been consulted," criticizes the environmental lawyer Mari Ángeles López.

Land with olive trees already uprooted in Cartaojal (Antequera, Málaga).

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In the past, the promoters considered the expense to bury the evacuation lines to the substations, which sometimes exceed 12 kilometers, "very expensive and unaffordable", but now almost everyone assumes these expenses due to the demands of the regional governments and the ministry.

"The environmental part and the neighborhood opposition must be worked on from the zero minute, and when the opposition is strong it is not worth fighting," says Alfonso Vargas, president of Caner.

The parliamentary initiative in Andalusia, designed to encourage citizen participation, has difficulty prospering: the socialist and conservative governments have ignored the 44 presented since 1988 in Andalusia.

None have prospered.

The transformation of the landscape will bring very striking examples such as Cartaojal, a district of Antequera (Málaga), where it is planned to locate the equivalent of a thousand panel soccer fields just 500 meters from the urban center;

or Navazuelo, in Guadahortuna (Granada), which will be strangled by a sea of ​​panels in all directions.

When it is finished, the small hamlet will become an oven every summer.

Visual recreation showing what Navazuelo (Guadahortuna, Granada) will look like, surrounded by solar power plants.

The controversy fully affects Jerez de la Frontera (212,000 inhabitants) because its traditional landscape of vineyards will be invaded by hundreds of thousands of panels and 210-meter wind turbines, almost the height of the Lollipop in Madrid (230 meters).

The fifth Andalusian city was left out of the parliamentary initiative due to the absence of a councilor in a plenary session.

“It is a landing from a sea of ​​mirrors without control.

We asked the Board to inform us of how many projects it has in the pipeline and it replied that it did not have time to give us the information”, criticizes the Deputy Mayor for Town Planning and the Environment, José Antonio Díaz (PSOE).

The Ganemos party ensures that the Board has already approved 10 of the 14 projected plants.

The break with the traditional image of Jerez collides with wine tourism and wineries, which welcome visitors to taste wines while walking through the vineyards.

“They place a monstrous wind farm with brutal mills 210 meters high just three kilometers from Jerez, in the heart of the historic vineyard, where vineyards have existed for thousands of years, with a base substation and 25 transformation turrets.

We are not against renewables, but against this disorderly growth that attacks heritage”, protests César Saldaña, president of the Sherry Regulatory Council.

The Council, which brings together 1,700 wine growers concerned about this landing in the parks, has denounced the El Barroso wind farm, owned by the Capital Energy company, before the Prosecutor's Office.

The company alleges that it has proposed to reduce the visual impact with tree and forest mass to cover the substation.

"The collaboration between the Consistory and the company will continue in the operation phase of El Barroso, in addition to prioritizing the hiring of local workers both during construction and maintenance tasks," the firm wields in a written response.

The Jerez PP voted against it in the municipal plenary session last December to join the initiative before Parliament, but now it censors the Board and the landing in the parks: "The Autonomous Administration does not report on the specific location of the wind turbine, but rather tells when an area is viable and does not affect birds or aircraft.

But the PGOU is in charge and you cannot locate 200-meter wind turbines in the vineyards”, criticizes María José García-Pelayo, a popular candidate for mayor.

The City Council maintains that the shielding of the General Plan for special vineyard protection soils only affects the photovoltaic panels and not the wind turbines, which must meet certain landscape requirements to which the Board has given its approval.

“The mayor [Mamen Sánchez] is sorry, but it is not true because she has the power to stop it,” Saldaña censors.