On July 17, 2024 several residents of the town of Lopera (Jaén) received an official letter in which they were informed that they were going to be expropriated from their land. Between 24 and 26 of the same month new letters arrived and they also did it in September and October. One of them was Rafael Alcalá’s father -in -law, current spokesman for the Campiña Norte Platform against Solar Megaplants. And, between the municipalities of Lopera, Arjona and Marmolejo seven solar plants will be installed in an extension of 895 hectares and cut, they say from the platform, 100,000 centenary olive trees (The Board reduces the figure of affected olive trees to less than 14,000). “When the letters began to arrive, people didn’t understand anything,” says Rafael Alcalá.
Among the inhabitants of this area, which It has 3,000 sunny hours a year, Many already suspected that sooner or later the interest of companies would arrive to install photovoltaic parks, although they did not think it would be so intensively an expropriation blow. In the characteristic “sea of olive trees”, olive is cultivated since the time of the Phoenicians and 60% of Spain’s oil occurs. “One thing is what each owner does, if he decides to lease or sell and another thing is the collusion of the administration and the expropriations of land,” says Alcalá, who also details that there are more than one hundred affected: “There are three types, those affected by the plaque fields themselves. In principle, it was fifty to those who were intended to expropriate. The second type and the most numerous, would be those affected by electricity evacuation lines. In this case, although they do not take away your farm, the owners must allow the company that owns the parks to use their farm at convenience for 30 or 40 years. And then there are those affected by the cable and the high voltage towers that must be built ».
Since July 2024, protests, demonstrations and contacts with other affected locations have been More than half a million olive trees. The spokesman also speaks of the disbelief and frustration they feel when they hear ads such as the one made by the Junta de Andalucía that states that it will plant 1,500,000 new trees in public land. «And on the other hand they cut half a million? What is happening to us is also happening in other CC AA, but why do we appear so much in the press and not other points of Andalusia or Spain? Because there were many affected by expropriation ».
Moratory to projects
The SOS rural platform has also joined the protest. In fact, this week began a collection of signatures with which he hopes to meet with a representative of the Board. «What has to be clear is that we are not against renewable energy, we respect it, but we do not agree on how it is being carried out. It cannot be at the expense of productive and high value lands to produce food. There are a lot of vacant lots where photovoltaic could be installed, but they take advantage of the field is in low hours. What we request is that the Immediate paralysis of the felling of olive trees In Lopera, in addition to expropriations, and that a moratorium on the conversion of agricultural land into industrial photovoltaic projects is established. An ecosystem is being transformed into an industrial infrastructure without a possible future return since where a plaque is put, nothing will be cultivated. The fertile soil layer that has taken thousands of years to form is lost, ”says Natalia Corbalán, spokesman for rural SOS.
Stop the expropriation
The legal action to stop the expropriations has not stopped since July 2024. And, according to Rafael Alcalá there is a law of the 50, “the same one that was used to create swamps and flood areas, which is being used for expropriations. In this law, which has not changed at this time, when a project to build a swamp declared public utility, the owners of the area could be displaced. It is also interesting to know how companies act. They reach places like this because they need nearby electrical substations, and we between Marmolejo and Lopera have a small hydroelectric dam of the 60s with a substation. A man in an office takes a plane, opens a compass and draws a circumference on a radius of about 5 or 10 kilometers around where there is a substation and there planet 10 or 12 projects. First presents the projects that know they are going to refuse, in natural parks for example. That is why then they speak from the administration that up to 40% of the projects are denied. Companies already have that. When they identify viable projects they begin to speak with the owners of the area. Who are the first to contact? To landowners. And once they have 50 or 60% of the land they need for their projects, what they do, instead of talking to the other small owners who are many, they are thrown out of law and they are put in an expropriation process. There we start with the legal processes and in the end the expropriations have been stopped. In fact, today, there are only two expropriated people, ”he says.
However, it indicates that the risk has not disappeared, «there is another part, because once the park is installed there is a new trap. The law allows once built, the owners can increase the plants by 20% if companies decide so. In that chaos they can expropriate directly. They don’t have to call you or anything.
Loss of production
“The speculation of these projects is great,” says Alcalá. «First because the projects are chopped, so that a mega photovoltaic plant of more than 160 MW, It becomes several power plants less than 50 MW, To avoid state control and make your approval easier, ”says the platform spokesman. In addition, Natalia Corbalán of SOS Rural points out: «Why are municipalities in a lot in favor of installing these projects? Because they are more income for them; It has nothing to do with a rustic land with one of an industrial terrain. That is, at the time they change the use to the land, and it already goes from being rustic to industrial, the IBI is exponentially multiplied. There is a lot of money at play and the benefit of a few is being favor, in front of the whole group, farmers, and in general, that of the whole society, because food sovereignty is being loaded ».
The loss of olive trees, calculate from the Lopera collective, will result in a decrease in production average olive of about 12,000,000 kilos and an economic loss that amounts to 13,500,000 euros. In addition, a total of 5,500,000 euros in wages would cease to be distributed in the town.
World Heritage
There is another point that raises suspicion among cooperatives in the area and agricultural organizations such as the union of small farmers and ranchers (UPA). In April 2024 4 the Institutional Commission of the «Landscapes of Olivar in Andalusia. Millennial history of an sea of olive trees »He withdrew the candidacy for world heritage. “It is curious that part of the opposition to continue with the candidacy came from the same region,” says Cristóbal Cano, general secretary of UPA to add that it is not about being against renewable development. “We are not in favor of moving food production or useful agrarian surface, specifically in woody such as olive grove, to give priority to other uses, especially when there is a lot of surface for solar installation, such as industrial estates, which does not compromise food production.”
Roofs
Encouraging is another of the platforms that has been denouncing the renewable model of mega plants in poorly populated areas (where social rejection is not generated) and on the cheap soil of CC AA such as Aragon, Andalusia, Extremadura and the two Castillas. «These regions are becoming large energy generators, while consumers, Madrid, Catalonia or the Basque Country, get rid of developments. In addition, we have calculated that if solar was installed on roofs, vacant lots and polygons, it would not have to be occupied with a single hectare of land, ”explains Rosa Pardo, a member of the coordinator. In this sense, Corbalán resurfaces the data of the Ministry of Agriculture, according to which The surface dedicated to photovoltaic parks increased by 166% in the last 8 years. “In Andalusia, 69.6 of photovoltaic plants and 90.9 of the thermosoles are being installed in high quality floors,” he says.
Italy prohibits facilities in high value soil
The denouncing platforms of the situation that is being lived in regions such as Jaén, Córdoba or Teruel with the development of mega renewable plants allude to Italy where a year ago the government approved a decree that prohibits the installation of parks in high -value agricultural land. Only the installation of solar panels is allowed at a certain height to be compatible with agricultural activity. “Meloni is clear, but it is not a matter of political tendency, because here in Spain, the Sumar party presented in May 2024 a proposition not of law to regulate the installation of plates in cultivable fields and special ecological protection,” says Natalia Corbalán.