The Lucense Municipality of Pol has about 1,500 inhabitants and that of Ribeira de Piquín is around 500. Located in the Meira region, northeast of the provincial capital, they are part of the rural Galicia that has been seeing its population decades decades. Within the initiatives to stop the loss of basic services, the two local governments have opted for a kind of private business municipalization to prevent them from closing or remaining abandoned and without activity. In the first case, the City Council has bought a supermarket about to lower the blind by retirement; In the second, the mayor has announced that the gas station, which has been managed with public media for more than a decade. The initiative adds to others already underway to exploit a fish farm, a kiwis plantation and a Celtic breed pig farm.
Roberto Fernández Rico (PSOE) is the mayor of Ribeira de Piquín since 2015. He exposes what is behind the municipal initiatives to assume these businesses: “The municipalities as small as we have many difficulties for the private initiative to come and invest. Hence we have no other option that, from the public, try to carry out economic initiatives.”
The idea, he says, was already among the electoral promises of his campaign ten years ago. He maintains that a triple objective is met: to recover abandoned land and facilities, to be an engine of economic activity, which implies generating employment – which, he says, is “stable and quality” -, and guarantee those services for the neighbors. Leave the door open to put the initiatives in private hands later, if any company is interested.
Fernández Rico highlights his concern for the descendant line of population in Ribeira de Piquín. One of the answers was to create a municipal, Terreo Foundation, participated only by the City Council, to recover abandoned buildings. They began to launch a fish farm, which currently sells about 3,000 kilos of trout per month. They started from facilities that were in disuse in the parish of Santalla, remodeled them, updated the permits and resumed the activity. Then it was a livestock exploitation in extensive by Porco Celta. The City Council rents a 10 -hectare land that belongs to the community of Montes. So far more than 200 fattened animals have been sold in the facilities. And a Kiwi plantation has also been launched and there is an initial experience with Faba.
The most recent project that Ribeira de Piquín will channel through its foundation is to open a gas station. The facilities already exist. They were lifted by a private company, but they are abandoned and the City Council will rent them. The mayor indicates that they are currently doing the administrative procedures and passing the controls so that the neighbors can reproduce “soon” here and save the trips around 20 kilometers to the suppliers that right now they have closer, which are in the neighboring municipalities of Meira, to Pontenova or Pol. The personnel who attend the gas station – two employees, according to the forecasts – will be directly hired by the foundation, for which six people already work.
The City Council receives support from the Lugo Diputación for this initiative. In this case, the provincial entity makes a contribution of 110,000 euros through an agreement. The councilor emphasizes that the Foundation, without profit, uses the income that is obtained from its activities to pay the payrolls of its staff, but also to invest in the new projects. He points out that the mentality is practical and that they are collecting all the economic data to use them in another idea, an agroecological advice office through which trying to attract private initiative.
The Municipal Supermarket of Pol
Near Ribeira de Piquín, in the municipality of Pol, a few months ago it was announced that the City Council would become the owner of the only supermarket that remains in its territory, located in the population of Mosteiro, where the local government building is also. The hitherto owner of the business retired and there was no one to give him the relay, so the mayor, Lino Rodríguez (PSOE), chose to include the premises within the municipal heritage. The councilor does not want to specify the plan at the moment, but points out that he hopes to be able to clarify how soon the initiative will be managed: if it will be done through a foundation, if it will be sought to be exploited by a franchise or an autonomous one or if another way will be explored.
Among the local government’s plans are also recovering the old sausage brand, Monciro, for the supermarket and allocating the upper part of the building to social housing, according to the newspaper Progress. The mayor explained that Pol received funds from the Diputación, with which he signed an agreement, for this operation. They are, he said, 105,000 euros, that another 30,000 are added for remodeling of the property, with a total area of 800 square meters. The purchase price was 150,000 euros.
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