Mar Garrote, member of the Etxaldeko Emakumeak group, of the association Ramón Roa Bionekazaritza, representing Josebe Blanco EHKOreader, Edurne Basterra, farmer and livestock, and Valen Arteaga, Araba Bizirik, met in the Vitorian district of Salburua. Margarida Prieto, from Galicia, who testified to the Galician Labrego Union, also attended.

The conference showed the concerns of each from their field. They all showed a landscape built for agro-industry and large distribution chains. The laws have been losing small farmers and rural farmers, subject to large capital and economic interests, year after year. The decisions taken for “the city and the city”, according to Josebe Blanco. The PNV member denounced that the rural environment is becoming a store for everything they do not want in the city, whether it be a landfill or incinerator, a TAV, high-voltage motorways or power towers. Everything for sustaining the urban environment, with a colonialist view of the rural environment. Meanwhile, according to Mar Garrote, rural farmers are looking for “survival” on increasingly difficult roads. The issue was the energy transition, but without a transition in the food model the rapporteurs hardly saw a solution. Unfortunately, for the garrotors, food is an issue that is not heard so much. Currently, only 3% of the fresh food consumed in the Basque Country is produced in it, while legumes, for example, travel an average of 7,500 kilometres to our homes.

Threats to the rural environment

There were a number of threats: the installation of mountain wind plants, the installation of photovoltaic plants on agricultural land and the dominance of agro-industry. To deal with these gigantic projects, Ramón Roa pointed out the need for the rural environment to be alive, so that the projects that emerge in the cities do not prevail in the rural environment. Revitalisation of the rural environment would change energy needs and allow for decentralisation. Trying to be optimistic, they talked about the changes that this multiple crisis can bring. “Unfortunately, there is only talk of replacing current energy sources with others, rather than reducing consumption.”

White talked about changing attitudes in cities. “We’ve finished the chocolate cake and we complain there’s no more. They offer us apples, but we don't want, we want a chocolate cake. We have to learn that there are limits, that we spend a long time. And above all with fewer things we can be happy the same.” More than one commented that in the COVID-19 pandemic farmers had recorded a significant increase in demand. Citizens agreed on the rural environment and paid more attention to nearby production. “They soon forgot, but,” Edurne Basterra said.

All the speakers commented that the climate is already experiencing the effects of the emergency. Margarida Prieto linked the severe Galician fires with the lack of rainfall and the lack of pastures to feed livestock. With the lack of winter cold, the rise of tree pests, which is not enough cold to recover in winter. The poor trend of recent years has increased this year, according to Roa. In the south of Álava it stopped raining in May and has left more than six months until last week. The climate is changing and Roa complained about the uncertainty of the peasants. “Grandparents told us that in winter it was cold and in spring it rained. We are now blind sowing land, but without knowing what will come in spring.”

Need for partnerships between cities and towns

In Galicia, wind power plants have long been known. In many villages there are two windmills per inhabitant. Asked what each group was doing in the face of this pressure, Margarida Prieto stressed that its main task is to disseminate information. “When they see the damage they can cause and the benefits for who they will be, citizens rise up against such projects.” Most of the Basque Country speakers spoke of the impossibility of acting because they “have a lot of work to survive.” However, Basterra pointed to the need to influence the awareness of the rural population.

Valen Arteaga denounced that the same transnationals who caused the crisis are now selling us the solution. “If we want to continue living the same way, we seem to have to accept the sacrifice of the rural environment. An area that we must take special care of to combat climate change.” Citizen participation was also considered essential, as it has often received more protection from the city than from the agents of the rural core. They stressed the need to establish alliances between cities and towns, as the city cannot be perpetuated and the attempts made by the institutions that saw with concern to further distribute both areas.

Farmers and farmers called the organization and the fight. They stressed the need to take steps on the road to deceleration, given that it is very difficult to hear things go worse. It's much easier to sell the wealth that wind power plants supposedly bring. If the trend does not change much, according to Roa, the camp will become an anthropology museum. “The shepherds are taken away and then they tell how the pastors lived, how the wool was made and where the sheep were walking. The shepherd fell down, and in those pastures there are now windmills.”

Afternoon mobilization

The Araba Bizirik platform organized a human chain in the form of a windmill on Saturday afternoon. Taken to the streets of Vitoria-Gasteiz, they saw the size of these 200 meters towers. With this action, the platform wanted to denounce all those projects aimed at “the industrialization of the mountains and the appropriation of the communal lands”, before “irreversible damage” occurs.