ValenciaMore than 3,000 million euros from Volkswagen, 261 from the Generalitat Valenciana – which must develop the second phase of the Parc Sagunt industrial estate and improve its connections – and a significant portion of the 379 million with which the State will help the company automotive industry to build its commitment to the electric vehicle, which also includes the plants in Landaben (Navarra) and Seat in Martorell.
These are the big figures for the construction of the future Volkswagen battery plant in Sagunto (Camp de Morvedre), which should create 3,000 direct and 12,000 indirect jobs, and which the Valencian president, Ximo Puig, qualify as “the biggest industrial investment in Spain in the last 50 years”.
A rain of millions from which the owners of the agricultural land where the factory will be located – which have already been expropriated – complain of feeling excluded after the company Espais Econòmics i Empresarials, owned by the Generalitat Valenciana and the State Company of Industrial Participations (Sepi), is appealing the price set by the provincial jury, a body dependent on the administration, because it considers it too high.
The public company refuses to pay between 18 and 25 euros per square meter – depending on whether it is land in production or not cultivated – that the expropriation jury has set to compensate the owners, who have rejected the offer of the ‘administration which, according to the agricultural entities, is between 9 and 16 euros. This is an assessment that the Unió Llauradora i Ranchedera estimates that between 10% and 15% of the owners of the 800 plots affected have accepted.
The offer of Economic and Business Spaces is significantly lower than that of previous phases of expropriations of the same estate – prior to a change in the land law – when up to 40 euros per square meter were paid. “We must remember that the prices of expropriation are always higher than those of buying and selling, and it is so because it is forced to sell. Moreover, in this case, the expropriation is not intended for essential infrastructure or for the good public, but to an investment with which the new owners intend to make a lot of money,” Salva Bosch, a technician in the expropriation department of the Unió Llauradora i Ranchedera, emphasized to the ARA.
This entity, alongside the Valencian Association of Farmers (AVA), has criticized that the administration wants to save 25 million euros, according to its calculations, and is ready to allocate 795,000 euros to the hiring of lawyers for the judicial process. “It is Kafkaesque and ridiculous the theater that the administration is putting on by appealing against the assessment of the expropriation jury and by offering the expropriated to be defended by the State Attorney’s Office if they decide not to appear, [una defensa] which will naturally pay with State money to face the same administration”, lamented the president of AVA, Cristóbal Aguado, and the general secretary of the Union, Carles Peris.
The president of the Generalitat Valenciana, Ximo Puig, does not see it that way, who has defended the offer because “resources are limited” and “things must be done properly”. However, he emphasized that the Generalitat will always offer dialogue and highlighted that there are many owners with whom it has already reached an agreement.