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INPRIMATU
Strategic lines of the Basque Government
  • If the reading of the Renewable Energy Sector Territorial Plan (PTS EBB) for farmers and livestock farmers was disappointing – and it was – it was not that it was much happier to read the report of responses to 4,217 allegants in this regard in July 2023. It was published on 31 October and the night was darker than usual in many rural houses and mountain areas.
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In the first 34 pages, the phrases that will be repeated in the next 453 pages report, literally, the succession of arguments that will lead to delusion, just interrupts it. As the reading progresses, it is clear that the responses to citizenship, associations and municipalities focus on the objectives that were collected at the beginning of the EBB PTS document published on 10 May 2023: “The aim is to reduce the current uncertainties of promoters and to increase legal certainty in order to awaken the interest of private initiative.” “The specified sites are intended for the installation of electricity generation, with the aim of discharging the energy generated in the electricity transmission or distribution network, and not in relation to self-consumption.”

We have not found paragrages in which people’s well-being is recognised or the intention to protect them is expressed, everything is aimed at the sponsoring companies.

Most of the phrases that appear in the report are absolutely consistent with these objectives; we have not found any paragadore in which people’s well-being is recognised or the intention to protect them is expressed, everything is aimed at the promoters; the rights of ordinary citizens do not appear, as well as the energy needed to sustain our lives. The few measures that protect citizens, if necessary, are eliminated. An example of this is the distance of 500 metres from these facilities to people’s places of residence. In the answer to the City Council of Beizama –280. - the report says: "The PTS establishes a public exclusion zone, that is, a radius of 500 meters above the population core, which is not applicable to isolated dwellings, which would make it virtually impossible to define the renewable use zones".

However, there were no surprises, as at the beginning of the report of responses to the allegations – 8. - On page 174, the Administration sets the path regarding the territorial model: "To develop a unique model that combines large and smaller facilities. Firstly, because reality shows that large installations are necessary to give guarantees to the system; (...)".

To give guarantees to the system, we citizens are left without guarantees.

“In a model with electrical installations of all sizes, large installations are needed to guarantee the system.” Which system? If we are talking about the electricity system, we are talking about the profits of private companies, the dividends of investors speculating with basic rights in IBEX35 and other exchanges – we can apply the polysemy of the term system and the capitalist system can also be the recipient of those guarantees. What is happening is that in order to give guarantees to the system, we citizens are left without guarantees and the opportunities that the planning of decentralised and nearby renewable energy facilities would give us have been lost.

If in those phrases of the document we included the model of feeding or husbandry, here we would also find vanity, but not with the public policies that should guarantee a healthy and healthy diet close to all people. We need only look at the strategic lines of work established by the Basque Government for the food system.

As you can see, the strategic lines of the Basque Government for citizen food will come from the hands of technological companies.

The first is the rescue of the large wineries in La Rioja, which are in a critical situation, as they cannot solve the overproduction that they had dreamed of. Next, the laboratory meat factory of BioTech Foods in Donostia-San Sebastián, a project co-financed by the EU and the Basque Government. The third is the extension of greenhouses of high technological value and standing – indoor vertical farming – to the whole of the Basque Country, in cooperation also now with multinationals. Lastly, there is the expansion of organic farming, which is explained in the Brussels suggestion that Europe’s money should continue to be collected, with 25% of agricultural and livestock land certified as organic by 2030. To this end, the forms of work or the accessions to the territory and the community are not important, but the achievement of a number of hectares. And the fifth, the caged bluefin tuna farming plant called Itsas Balfegó, created jointly by Balfegó SL and AZTI, in Getaria. As you can see, the strategic lines of the Basque Government for the feeding of citizens will come from the technological companies that are examples.

It is curious that the future of farmhouses is not at the top of the list of strategic lines; even more so given that the people of the future will also have to eat and that most of the baserritars that we are currently working on have the retirement age close. So if young people don't take over the dwellings, what are we going to eat? Apparently, the Government has already thought about what the food of the future will be, and the technology companies, which are examples, are going to complete the handover of the baserritars, which will easily be seduced by the citizens’ money. The baserritars will have room in the Basque Parties and Olentzero Day. Basque Culinary Centrer is also dedicated to the supply of gourmet products with label. And for ethnographic photos or museums.

According to the report of responses to the allegations to the PTS that we are analyzing, the massive expansion of renewable energies does not question food sovereignty, but "the characteristics and size of the CAPV territory limit, which impedes the massive development of crops, as in other regions with different orography and conditions".

Characteristics and dimensions of the territory. No, however, the recent blows that the energy vultures that now reach us to the peasants and the rural population, with the help of the political power, want to give us with the process of colonization; nor the artificialization and occupation of the fertile lands that we have already suffered; nor the public policies of subsidies and their unfair distribution; let alone the impositions of the large distributors, the lobbies of agribusiness and international trade agreements to the farmers. Nor do the relays that do not exist. No, it's just a orographic issue. Thanks to the technological companies that attract us to fill the casings of the Basque self-government, if not, the essence of this “industrial country” is over.

What is the point of reserving more difficult land for energy projects, more difficult for agriculture, if "exemplary indoor food" is on its way?

In this respect, it is also well understood what is stated in the report of claims: "In the case of Central Álava, unlike other Functional Areas, it is a flat area with greater capacity to accommodate larger photovoltaic installations (...)". Therefore, why reserve for energy projects soils that due to their inclination are more difficult to cultivate, if the "indoor exemplary food" is on the way?

According to the report that has become the Bible, in those lands where farmers and farmers produce the food "electrical installations will be installed depending on: 1. Interest of promoter and 2. That the project presented obtains the appropriate sectoral and environmental authorizations".

And that is that the world is made for them, for the promoters and tailored to their hunger. The use of this energy is indifferent: for death or for life. Then there will be the right permits to make everything as edible as it is sustainable.

Right and left, you know how to undo the mess that we have above us: this society has to come to the limits of the planet.

Although laws are laws, they are not always legitimate when they endanger the lives of all; and less fair when they deny the future to those who come. And you also know, Left and Right, you know how to undo the disaster that we have above, it's proven: this society has to come to the limits of the planet. But you prefer to live like foams, up there, on the ego.

It seems that the time has come to lift the land, together, across the street and through the countryside. We cannot allow the land and water that keep us alive to plunder, because in that life we are going – literally, as they say now –.