- 19 mayors from the Ricobayan dam area have sent letters to the European Commissioner for the Environment, Virginijus Sinkevius, and to the European Green Pact Commissioner, Frans Timmermans. Iberdrola, along with the increase in the price of electricity, has massively emptied the reservoir to generate energy. Citizens and mayors complain that “false drought” affects, inter alia, tourism, the environment and rural irrigation. The same has happened in the reservoir of Valdecañas, in the state of Cáceres.
The mayors denounced in the letter the "excessive disaster" of the reservoir of Ricobayo, which, according to El Salto, "has caused a drastic degradation of the territory and its entire habitat, and damages of very difficult landscape and economic repair". They say right against Iberdrola, to say one thing and to do the opposite: “We want to communicate to the public the lack of ethical and moral value of a company that shows corporate principles of respect and commitment to nature and the environment. They are a long way from this reality that wants to show the company’s practices,” the mayors explained to those in charge of the European Union.
Business up, water level down
Iberdrola is the main energy exploiter of the reservoirs of Castilla y León. The same incident occurred in the Veldepeñas reservoir, in the province of Cáceres, in Ricobayo. Iberdrola began to empty the two reservoirs at a rate never seen since the change in electricity tarification took place on 1 June, which caused a sharp increase in the electricity bill. According to official data provided by the Douro Hydrographic Confederation, between 1 June and 11 August the volume of water in the reservoir has increased from 95% to 13% of its capacity. “We have never seen such an empty swamp,” said the mayor of Belvis de Monroy, Marcos Pascasio, to the newspaper El Periódico de Extremadura, referring to the “false drought”.
Today @iberdrola has reopened the gates of the Ricobayo reservoir Ayer was 10.9% of its capacity. Gaur berriro ere. How long does it get rid of Zamora's natural resources? pic.twitter.com/Ys3Tst0Rmv
— Cristina Manías? (@gnu_manias) 5 August 2021
Angry with Iberdrola
In the villages around the reservoirs the anger is large and widespread. The letter from the mayors is not the only sign. Iberdrola is receiving numerous criticisms both on social networks and in the media of Castilla y León. Political representatives of the pp have also publicly pronounced against the Basque multinational. For example, according to Naiz, the second vice-president of the Diputación de Zamora and the representative of Tourism and Territorial Promotion, Jesús María Prada, has sent a letter to Ignacio Sánchez Galán, president of Iberdrola. “It has no attachment to the territory that serves it to generate part of its riches (...) Iberdrola never behaved so sectarian and usurred, emptying the reservoirs to fulfill its accounts.”