Machín, on the controversial wind turbine in La Santa: "It is screwed in and they can remove it whenever they want"

The mayor of Tinajo, Jesús Machín (Coalición Canaria), intervened this Monday morning on Radio Lanzarote-Onda Cero to respond to the controversy generated by the installation of a wind turbine in La Santa within the modernization plan for the irrigation areas of Lanzarote. 

This wind turbine will supply the desalination and purification plant installed in La Santa. The work, promoted by the State Commercial Company for Agrarian Infrastructures, SA., is part of an agreement signed with the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, which foresees a total investment of 24.4 million euros to modernize the irrigation of the municipality.

"Everyone knew, we all knew that a mill was coming," confessed Jesús Machín in his radio appearance this Monday, where he responded to criticism about the height of the wind turbine (around 70 meters, according to the PSOE). Machín insisted that a wind turbine "cannot be three meters tall," while confessing that he did not "perfectly check the meters" it was going to measure.

Despite the controversy generated among the population, the head of Tinajo assured that this installation does not catch political representatives by surprise, even though he acknowledged that it represents "a very big impact" in La Santa. "The political side, everyone knew, let no one say they didn't, it had all the permits in existence," he added. "If it had been discussed at that time, it would have been resolved," he stressed.

The mayor of Tinajo insisted that the wind turbine "is screwed down precisely and they can remove it whenever they want," but questioned that to replace it with solar panels and obtain a similar amount of energy would require "at least 10,000 or 12,000 meters" of land or roofs.

"What needs to be achieved," Machín continued, "is the commitment of the Ministry and the Government of the Canary Islands to be able to remove this wind turbine. "This project has a deadline because otherwise, the minister told me, European funds would be lost and it couldn't be done," he pointed out on the program Buenos días, Lanzarote of Radio Lanzarote-Onda Cero. 

The municipal leader indicated that "now what there must be is a commitment that this generator can be changed" and urged for a meeting to be arranged with the Minister of Agriculture, Luis Planas (PSOE), for this purpose.

At another point, the mayor recalled that this project also foreseen the construction of an outfall which was later replaced by filtering wells after local opposition.

The environmental impact study of the project was put on public display in July 2024, where the installation of a single wind turbine with a power of 2,350 kilowatts on a plot in La Santa, owned by the Water Consortium, next to the current treatment plant, was contemplated.