Transición says that stopping the solar panel field in Mácher is in the hands of the Canarian Government

The Deputy Minister of Ecological Transition of the Government of the Canary Islands, Julieta Schallenberg (Partido Popular), has assured this Friday morning that the Governing Council of the regional Executive will have the final say in the decision to halt or continue with the controversial declaration of general interest of a project to install a photovoltaic plant in Mácher.

"I cannot say what the Government will say, because that ultimately goes to the Governing Council and I cannot get ahead of myself," Schallenberg maintained, pointing out that "there may be many indications that it will not go through" if the Tías City Council and the Cabildo of Lanzarote have already opposed it.

The president of the Cabildo of Lanzarote, Oswaldo Betancort (Coalición Canaria), and the insular councilor for Territorial Policy, Jesús Machín Tavío (CC), stated that their refusal would be sufficient for the project not to go ahead.

However, Schallenberg insisted that it will be the Canary Islands Government that "will decide in due course" whether or not to "leave this private initiative on the table," which plans to install 1,680 solar panels on rural land protected for agriculture. "Given the opposition, it is likely to happen," Schallenberg insisted, refusing to make definitive statements.

Application of Article 6 bis to streamline the procedure

As reported by La Voz, the Minister of Ecological Transition of the Canary Islands Government, Mariano H. Zapata (PP), ordered last May to declare the Tías I project of general interest, applying article 6 bis of the Canary Islands Electricity Sector Law. This law allows, in cases of "justified reasons of urgency or exceptional interest," projects to be subjected to "a special authorization regime," which exempts them from urban planning licenses or "any other municipal or insular preventive control act."

This photovoltaic field is promoted by the Madrid-based company RS Iberia 23 SL, headquartered on Paseo de la Castellana, and in addition to these 1,680 solar panels, a transformation center, and the expropriation of 36 plots of land in the municipality of Tías.

This installation would occupy 24,117 square meters of a 28,721 square meter area of rural land protected for agriculture. Furthermore, it is the second project that has attempted to install solar panels in Mácher; the first was declared of insular interest at the beginning of last year, but the procedure lapsed.

For its part, the Canarian Vice-Minister of Ecological Transition has insisted that the project "has not yet been declared" of insular interest, but rather that its processing has begun and has assured that Mariano H. Zapata's order is not valid until it is ratified in the Governing Council. While she has defended that the Canarian Executive cannot paralyze these initiatives "if there is no objective cause".

Faced with this, the Tías City Council highlighted in its allegations that the application of article 6 bis "cannot serve to arbitrarily legalize prohibited land uses" such as that of Mácher, which Canarian laws protect for its significant value to the primary sector. The Tías City Council, supported by a technical report from a municipal architect, also recalled that the General Urban Planning Plan of Tías "expressly prohibits energy use" in this category of land.

Schallenberg has acknowledged regarding the application of 6 bis that it is "a procedure that in principle is extraordinary, but which unfortunately has become ordinary," due to the lack of reserved land in the municipality and on the island for installing renewable energies. The vice-minister has insisted that the reform of the Canary Islands Government's Law on Climate Change and Energy Transition seeks to combat the abuse of this procedure with renewable acceleration zones.

The definition of ZAR, an "error"

Along with the declaration of insular interest of this photovoltaic plant, renewables have opened several fronts between the Canarian Government, the Cabildo of Lanzarote, and the island's city councils. The agreement signed to establish the renewable acceleration zones (ZAR) between the president of the Cabildo of Lanzarote, Oswaldo Betancort (CC), and the Canarian Minister of Ecological Transition, Mariano H. Zapata (PP), was already a cause of dispute for months.

In fact, both institutions are immersed in a monitoring commission for the rectification of the ZAR maps, which initially projected fields of solar panels and wind turbines on more than 3,100 hectares of the island (occupying 3.75% of the territory), although only 0.23% of the territory would be needed to meet the decarbonization objectives for 2030. This Friday, the vice-minister has stressed that they are currently "in a redefinition process," together with the Cabildo.

"The material error was of no importance because it was very easy to correct and what has happened since is that not only was that error wanted to be corrected, but other areas that were agreed upon have been wanted to be conditioned," Schallenberg pointed out, who insisted that the procedure "has had ups and downs."

In this regard, he announced that the latest proposal with the rectifications was sent by the Government of the Canary Islands to the Cabildo on June 11 and it is expected to update the protocol "so that everyone is comfortable" before August. This Friday, Schallenberg met with the Cabildo to address the second proposal.

The deputy minister stressed that for the drafting of the project, the Canary Islands government is based on the Cabildo's own Provisional Insular Ordinances (OPI). "We understand that what has happened is that those OPIs were not agreed upon with the municipalities and it has created a discomfort that we will now try to correct," he concluded.