The Government will allow wind farms in up to 5,000 square kilometers of marine surface after the Council of Ministers has approved the Maritime Space Management Plans (POEM) 2022-2027. The five maritime demarcations into which the waters of the Spanish coast are divided, which map the million square meters of the Spanish marine surface are the North Atlantic, South Atlantic, Strait and Alborán, Levantino-Balearic and Canary regions.
The plans incorporate an ordering of the priority uses of the areas with high potential for different activities that are developed or that may want to be developed in the coming years, seeking where there may be synergies or prioritization criteria.
In the opinion of the third vice president, Teresa Ribera, among the “most novel” aspects of this cartography of marine activity areas is that it identifies where, for example, the extraction of aggregates can be carried out to be used in tasks such as beach restoration; or that some spaces are allocated to R+D+i innovation activities that explain the “important weight” that Spain has in terms of offshore wind (marina) patentsFor example such as those developed in experimental areas of the Canary Islands or the Basque Country or in terms of aquaculture.
The Spanish wind sector has celebrated the approval of the Royal Decree that represents “the starting signal” that the wind sector expected for the deployment of floating wind power in Spain. “This approval means a necessary and positive step to start the deployment of offshore wind power in Spain, at a time when the countries around us already have their plans,” the Wind Energy Business Association (AEE) said in a statement.
The plan has not satisfied all the actors. The president of the National Federation of Fishing Guilds (FNCP), Basilio Otero, has considered the Royal Decree “the greatest insult of the Government against fishing in recent times”. According to Otero, the plans “forget” fishing and also “the demographic challenge” as they will cause depopulation in coastal areas. “It is one of the biggest outrages of the last decades”he told Efe.
The Federation of Brotherhoods considers that in Spain, the coexistence between fishing and wind power is not comparable to that of other European countries because, on the one hand, the number of inshore vessels is much higher and on the other “the kilometers of continental platform are much less”.
That means many ships coexist in a small platform area and that their expulsion from fishing grounds due to the effect of wind farms will result in an excess concentration of vessels in other fishing areas, as has occurred with the closures in the northeast Atlantic imposed by the European Commission. “Any comparison (with other countries) is a lie and a fallacy,” she stressed.
According to Otero, the government’s plans have exempted areas in the south and have reduced the area in the north delimited for wind farms, but they affect fishing grounds where 4,500 of the 9,000 vessels in the Spanish fleet fish.