Art, I borrowed your phrase about tiptoeing around the tulips here (toward the end). This is a piece on Spain's economic recession, how it has exposed structural deficits, what the government is doing to fix it and how Mt. Carondio in Asturias is the result of a great deal of improvising and short-term thinking.
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Art, garrara lo que dixeras de dir de puntiel.las pa conos tulipanes pa esti testo (al final). Vei sobre la recesion economica n'Espana, cumo xurdienon deficits estructurales cona crisis, que ia lo que ta fadiendo l'estau pa igualo ya cumo el parque eolico na Serra de Carondio ia un exemplu de la improvisacion ya estratexa a curtiu plazu n'Asturias.
The windfall of Mt. Carondio (Asturias, Spain)
Spain suffered a brutal contraction of -3.8% of GDP in 2009. Unlike other European Union countries, its lack of competitiveness will not bring it out of recession any time soon. The economy is set to shrink by another -0.7% in 2010 and unemployment could rise above 19%.
The beautiful region of Asturias in the northwest has been paying the price of a 30-year-old industrial restructuring. In 2009, as a result of the global recession, it faces a revenue shortfall of €356 million. For its 2010 budget, the regional administration announced fiscal losses of €136 million and a drop of €220 million in capital transfers from Brussels and Madrid.
Spain’s property bubble, which burst in 2007-08, means construction is no longer a major source of municipal income. Town halls in Asturias have seen their income drop an average 30% this year. To avoid bankruptcies at the local government level, policymakers in Oviedo, the regional capital, have allowed municipal debt to rise to 125% of income.
This means municipalities will be able to buy debt beyond the previous threshold of 110%. It is comparable to the debt-to-income ratio of Greece, a country near collapse after its liabilities rose to 130% of GDP in December. Like Asturias, the Greek government has piled debt by hiring public sector workers in a bid to stave off social unrest. Today, one out of four Greek workers is employed by the state.
Buying people with debt is not only disastrous financially, but deeply unfair. The labor system in Spain is such that inefficient workers on permanent contracts are nearly impossible to fire. Meanwhile, talented young people scrape by on 6-month contracts at minimum wages of €624 per month. They were the first to lose their jobs during the global crisis. The inefficient public sector workers remain.
The green fix
The dismal situation has led to spectacular fixes. To much fanfare, the Socialist-led government in Madrid unveiled a new ‘sustainable economy law’ in November. The idea is to liberalize electricity markets and encourage renewable energy, as well as step up training in IT. It is all good considering the country’s structural deficits. But pressure from trade unions has foiled any labor market reforms.
In Asturias, the new economic thrust along green lines is encouraging a second round of wind energy tenders. The regional administration has announced 40 new wind farms, equivalent to 1,000 new turbines—all of them in rural West Asturias, an area with the lowest income per capita and nil political leverage. Its major asset is its pristine wilderness and archaeology, which have spawned eco-tourism.
Income per capita in counties like Allande is less than €11,000, barely 39% of Spain’s average. Allande is home to small-scale agriculture, which accounts for 51% of the local economy. Services, including tourism, account for another 40%. But the low population density of 6.3 per km2 and high wind density of 600-800 watts per m2 make for a lethal combination. It draws electricity producers looking for tax incentives and energy subsidies. For them, the mountains are pure real estate.
Allande already produces 38.9MW of wind energy with its 59 wind turbines high up in the Serra de los Lagos (1,416m). Electricity generation from that farm alone accounts for 12.8% of the region’s total wind energy capacity of 304MW. With a population of 2,106, it means the citizens of County Allande already produce more than their fair share of green power.
A Special Plan
Now, the municipality of Allande, headed by Socialist Jose Antonio Mesa, wants to build another wind farm. The novelty is that Mesa has approved a project to erect 25 wind turbines of 2MW on archaeological land. This will generate a windfall of €260,000, equivalent to €129 per person in the county over a 25-year-period, the average lifetime of these installations. It is literally money from heaven.
Mt. Carondio is a highland area of heather bushes and dolmens. Along a 10km prehistoric corridor known as the
Carreiriega de los Gal.legos (‘The roadway of the Galicians’), there are 35 megaliths, the most famous of which is the dolmen known as
A llastra da Filadoira (‘The spinner’s capstone’). The barrows are the legacy of pastoral societies who used them to bury their dead and mark tribal boundaries.
The highlands were declared a ‘Protected Landscape’ in the 1990s, although the status was never made official. What makes Mt. Carondio unique is the sheer number of prehistoric finds. Inside the barrow of
Castellin, archaeologists found a 2 meter stone with intricate engravings. In 2007, a Roman-period military camp was unearthed that is thought to have served the gold mining operations in the 1st century AD.
The trouble with Mt. Carondio began 10 years ago when wind energy first took off in Asturias. In 1999, the Asturian government implemented Law 13/1998, providing the sector with a legal framework. Genesa, the renewable arm of what is now HC Energia, initially proposed a farm consisting of 59 wind turbines of 850kw. A dirt road ran along the proposed route, a key element in reducing costs.
The first environmental impact assessment for Mt. Carondio was made public in April 1999. At the time, only the cash-strapped municipality of neighboring County Eilao gave its go-ahead. The municipality of Allande, then in the hands of the center-right Partido Popular (PP), rejected the plan. They argued that the need for access roads and grid connections was tantamount to setting up a power plant at Stonehenge.
When the regional government geared up to lift its moratorium on wind farms in July 2008, Mt. Carondio was declared off limits. But pressure exerted on archaeologists at the Cultural Council in Oviedo reversed their decision. In March 2009, the same archaeologists who had vetoed the project now gave it a green light. It is then that a new wind farm project consisting of 21 wind turbines of 2MW emerged like a phoenix, now dubbed a ‘Special Plan’.
Appeals by a lawyer hired by the Coordinadora Ecoloxista d’Asturies (CEA), an environmental group, to view the ‘Special Plan’ at the Cultural Council in Oviedo were repeatedly denied in October. The Director of Historic Preservation, Jose Luis Vega, and Luisa Maria Lobo, of the Legal Department, denied CEA access to what should have been public information. Although local politicians pay lip service to transparency, it is rare in practice.
However, such was the media noise around Mt. Carondio that the mayor of Allande has gone ahead with road construction without approval by the planning commission (CUOTA). Mesa is now presumably liable for damages to local archaeology after excavators attempted to grade the terrain. Pictures shot in December show machines steamrolling over the ancient roadway. Meanwhile, archaeologists have been reduced to staking out each of the 35 Neolithic sites so bulldozers do not trample over them.
Instead of tiptoeing around the tulips, the regional government of Asturias is selling its most prized assets to so-called green energy companies. In these days of global recession and climate change, renewable energy has few opponents. Ironically, it is an environmentalist group that spearheaded the campaign to save Mt. Carondio. A former mayor, meanwhile, has labeled the windfall project as ‘food today and hunger tomorrow’.
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