The Council of Ministers, at the proposal of the third vice president and minister for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge, Teresa Ribera, succeeded this Tuesday the Maritime Space Management Plans (POEM) in which four areas of high potential for the use offshore wind with 19 ‘polygons’ and 5,000 square kilometers are reserved for its implementation.
The reactions to the planes announced by the minister were diverse. Above all, from the fishing sector, which she has described the plan as “the biggest attack that fishing and marine ecosystems have suffered in all history.” All this, despite the fact that Ribera assured after the Council of Ministers that there was a “consensus” among all the ministerial departments with competences in the sea, the coastal autonomous communities, the sectors involved and civil society.
Torcuato Teixeira, spokesman for the Platform in Defense of Fisheries and Marine Ecosystems, a group called ‘Burela Manifesto’, when it was born in 2021, and legal adviser to the National Federation of Fishing Guilds, has been blunt with La Información: ” The POEM is a historic attack, the largest there has ever been, for fishing and marine ecosystems”, he has sentenced.” northwest of the peninsula, on the Atlantic-Cantabrian axis”, where the most distant area identified by the POEM is 31 kilometers from the shore and the closest, 21 kilometers, while in the Canary Islands there are parts that are 1.85 kilometers from distance, “without knowing how this will affect fisheries and marine ecosystems.”
In the Canary Islands there are areas that are 1.85 kilometers away and “it is not known how this will affect fishing and marine ecosystems”
The fishing sector has flatly rejected the word “consensus” to which the minister alluded: “It is clear that they have paid no attention to us,” Teixeira assured, adding that the government “has succumbed and has ‘sold out’ ‘ to the energy lobbies, to the electric companies, to the wind power… This Executive fills his mouth talking about the Paris Agreement and then does nothing in defense of sustainable fishing or marine ecosystems.
The Platform has explained that in the North Atlantic-Cantabrian axis there are “more than 300 identified fishing grounds” and many of them are “invaded” by these spaces reserved by the Government for offshore wind power. In addition, Teixeira has pointed out, “there are pelagic species such as anchovy, sardines, tuna, mackerel, horse mackerel… that constantly move across the entire continental shelf that they intend to fill with wind turbines.” For this reason, “the way of life of thousands of fishermen and seafarers is put at risk and campaigns as important for the sector as those of bonito and anchovy or bocarte, which are a large part of the sector’s livelihood throughout of the year”.
“We are not going to stop and we will continue in our fight”
For this reason, the fishermen announce that “we are not going to stop and we will continue in our fight to defend the sector” and “we hope that there is someone in the Government with half a brain to stop this outrage. Because, I repeat, 5,000 square kilometers cannot be reserved for the development of wind energy without taking into account the consequences that this will have for other activities such as fishing or the conservation of marine ecosystems.”
The ‘Burela Manifesto’ has been explaining since its constitution more than a year ago that “the continental shelves of the Baltic and North Seas, where many offshore wind farms have been installed, are much wider than that of the Bay of Biscay, which in the At best, it reaches 35 kilometers offshore (to give us an idea, the average depth of the entire Baltic Sea is around 55 meters and practically all the waters of the North Sea have depths less than 200 meters)”.
The Bay of Biscay “differs in that from other European seas (its continental platform is incomparably narrower) and it also differs in that it contains (in that narrow platform) an extraordinary biological wealth.” Only the fleet that works in the Cantabrian-Northwest -they explain from the Burela Manifesto- “is made up of almost 5,000 vessels, a number much higher than that registered in Denmark (2,034), Belgium (64), the Netherlands (839) or Germany (1,293). ) ships), countries all bordering the Baltic and North seas. According to the Burela Manifesto platform, now the Platform in Defense of Fisheries and Marine Ecosystems, “up to 95% of the fishing activity carried out by the Galician, Asturian, Cantabrian and Basque fleets takes place there, on the Cantabrian continental shelf.” And that is why the fishermen adhered to this Manifesto say “no” to the installation of offshore wind farms in a strip that is barely 35 kilometers wide at its greatest point and that has 300 rich fishing grounds.
The defense of the Wind Energy Association
On the other side is the Wind Business Association (AEE), which has considered that the approval of these planes “is the starting signal that the wind sector expected for the use of floating wind in Spain” and therefore “the sector welcomes the approval of the Royal Decree”. The AEE has ensured that “intensive collaboration has been carried out with all the agents to find the best possible fit, renouncing some areas of high wind potential (more than 20% of the surface contemplated in the draft that was submitted to public consultation) to guarantee the compatibility of offshore wind power with safety, fishing, tourism and other activities, aware of the Administration’s effort to reach the greatest possible consensus among all the sectors involved.” But the fishing sector denies the biggest: “Here there was no consensus and it is a total attack on our activity.”
