The director of projects for the construction of two wind farms in the Basque Country, Jon Zayas Statkraft, has announced in Radio Euskadi that his project includes giant towers: “They would be 205 meters high and 170 meters in diameter,” the engineer explains. They would be double or triple the wind currently existing in the CAPV, according to the data provided by EiTB.

Zayas explains that by arguing why they are going to be that big size, it's going to be for the mills to "occupy less soil." The planned wind farm in Eskoriatza and Aramaio will have eight mills and the wind farm in Azpeitia will have three mills.

According to the engineer, the energy generated from them will be distributed among the companies and municipalities participating in the project and the possibility of creating energy cooperatives among the citizens has not been ruled out. The representative of Statkraft has also put on the table the construction of a network of physical cables for supply.

Meeting opened on 11 October

As soon as Statkraft’s project was known on 13 September, the mayor of Azpeitia, Nerea Alkorta, announced an open meeting with the citizens and the presence of representatives of the multinational to explain the Piaspe project. This meeting will take place on 11 October at the Soreasu Theatre.

The City of Azpeitia has published the document registered in the City Hall itself to publicize the project that Statkraft is planning for this municipality (pdf). Written in Basque and Spanish, it details, among other aspects, that they have a previous report for access to the electricity grid from the Lasao substation to the energy obtained from windmills, and that the company aims to "study, promote and develop new participation schemes".

Sañoa Bizirik

From the political and business point of view, the “music” of the project – Fagor, for example, wants to establish relations with the multinational because he is interested in it – has been seen with this eye. On the contrary, it has aroused mistrust among a number of citizens. On Tuesday, more than a hundred people met at the Old Azpeitia Union to discuss the issue and created the Sañoa Bizirik group, which will affect this mountain, to organize it against the wind park.

Several members explain to Uztarria that they are concerned not only with the visual impact wind power will have, but also with the infrastructure for its implementation: “The laying of these mills should be opened and it is not known from where.” It is estimated that the plant of each mill will have a diameter of 26 meters. The model has also been questioned: "It's not about us being against renewables and wind, but the model. We can't start industrializing the mountains."

In the article written in El Salto, Gessamí Forner concludes: Statkraft “separates itself from Iberdrola because it takes care of its forms, but both share that they choose the places where they want to install the windmills.” The journalist spoke with Aitor Urresti, professor of the UPV; Urresti does not see Statkraft’s project wrong, but criticises the lack of spatial planning in this area in the Basque Country: “The companies propose the installation of windmills in the area most exposed to the wind, that is, in the saws, in areas with little man-made anthropometry. Mills make sense in degraded areas.”