In January 2022, the president of Castilla-La Mancha announced the ‘stop’ of the autonomous community to facilitate the installation of intensive livestock farms. The Government of Emiliano García-Page, with an absolute majority in the regional Parliament, managed to carry out a moratorium until December 31, 2024, with the PP and Ciudadanos voting against.
Page announced that the moratorium would remain in place until national regulations regarding the regulation of intensive livestock farming were clarified. And he did it in full controversy with the then Minister of Consumer Affairs, Alberto Garzón. Today, 82% of CAP aid favors the livestock industry that emits the most CO₂.
In Castilla-La Mancha the moratorium has never been considered real, but rather a ‘strain’, say the groups and citizen movements that have been fighting against ‘macro farms’ for almost a decade.
In 2016 the concept ‘macrofarm’ did not even exist. In fact, many continue to deny it. It arose from the struggle of several towns in the north of Guadalajara, around Sigüenza, who warned of what was coming to them. Then, above all, other groups in Albacete and Cuenca did it.
They looked at their neighbors in Aragon, and also towards Catalonia. There in 2015 there was already talk about the excesses in the use of nitrogen fertilizers, the impossibility of the field to absorb so much slurry, the increase in the level of nitrates and their presence in the aquifers.
Next Tuesday the moratorium on intensive livestock projects ends in Castilla-La Mancha. The regional government said that it would rise having done its ‘duties’, via decree.
On the one hand, in March 2024 the Minister of Sustainable Development told elDiarioclm.es that they were working on a “restrictive” manure management decree for when the moratorium ended. The regulatory text was published this Friday, December 27 ‘in extremis’ before the end of the year and Mercedes Gómez justifies the rule: “We had to find a solution and avoid bad practices.”
In addition, it is committed to a plan for biomethane with a horizon of 2030. The regional Executive boasts the capacity to produce it, due to the high generation of organic waste in the territory, up to 15 million tons. The plan will be a priority in areas vulnerable to nitrates and both environmental groups and citizen platforms against macro-farms believe that in reality what is sought is “to satisfy the demands of the gas ‘lobby’ and the meat industry, the most pampered by the Castilian-Manchegan leaders.”
“We are disappointed, this is all a farce”
“We are disappointed,” acknowledges Inmaculada Lozano, national spokesperson for Stop Ganadería Industrial. This farmer and rancher from Albacete explains how open public participation both to regulate manure and the future of biomethane is “a farce” and that her allegations have not been taken into account. “We are an involved party but only the livestock industry and certain unions have been taken into account.”
That they want to calm us down by saying that we still have room to become Aragon and Catalonia… Do we really aspire to that? Can’t we stop here looking at how we already have water and soil?
Inmaculada Lozano
— National spokesperson for Stop Industrial Livestock
In November they held a meeting at the Ministry of Sustainable Development. “We aspire to reach the limits of Aragon and Catalonia,” he laments, in terms of meat production.
“Now we are the fourth autonomous community in production, we are not the first,” acknowledges Inmaculada Lozano. Despite this, he warns, Castilla-La Mancha already has a high percentage of its territory declared vulnerable to nitrates.
“That they want to calm us down by saying that we still have room to become Aragon and Catalonia… Do we really aspire to that? “Can’t we stop here, seeing how we already have water and soil?” asks the spokesperson in Spain for Stop Ganadería Industrial.
A year ago, Catalonia was looking for water in its aquifers in the midst of a historic drought, but 40% are contaminated by slurry from pig farms and fertilizers that have compromised its groundwater despite the fact that they are “strategic reserves.”
In 2022, a Greenpeace report already warned that 63% of Castilla-La Mancha’s groundwater is contaminated by nitrates. The European Commission took Spain before the European Court of Justice for the excess of nitrates in the waters and it is known that more than 200,000 people have tap water contaminated by agricultural and livestock remains.
Added to this is that, at the end of 2024, the Government of Spain has recognized in its report on water quality that pesticide levels are already above the legal maximum.
It is made clear to us that in the towns we are second-class citizens. It’s like telling us that we can drink contaminated water or that we can smell like shit every day. That would never be allowed in a city.
Inmaculada Lozano
— National spokesperson for Stop Industrial Livestock
Stop Ganadería Industrial does not believe that replacing the moratorium with a regulatory decree for slurry will improve things, nor that it will be “restrictive” as the regional government claims. Not only because of the ten-year margin that the regional government grants to farms and manure management entities to adapt to those supposed ‘restrictions’ that the new regulations will pose, but because, he warns, waterproofing the slurry ponds will be “a matter of good faith”, taking into account that what the decree asks for is a “responsible declaration” and that the review of its status will occur every five years.
“If in the last ten years we have reached this point, I don’t even want to imagine what will happen in ten more.” Lozano calls it “nonsense” and believes that “the optimal thing” would be to carry out a strategic evaluation municipality by municipality “to really know how many hectares of land they can take advantage of.” the digestate that the biogas plants will produce because we are very saturated. Furthermore, neither the rainfall nor the land is the same in some areas of the region or others. “It’s common sense.”
The Pueblos Vivos Cuenca collective is already informing the municipalities of this province about the fact that starting in January the construction and expansion of macro farms will be authorized again. And not only that, the biomethane plan projects up to 60 plants in this province alone.
“With the boom that these biomethane plants are having, we fear that it will be a ‘call effect’ for more industrial livestock farming,” says Inmaculada Lozano. “For the regional government, industrial livestock farming and its discharges never became a problem, despite being aware that in reality it was.” In this regard, he criticizes that “now they are trying to sell us biogas as the miraculous solution.”
For Stop Macrogranjas, what it will entail will be “a greater fragmentation of the economy of the areas where it is implemented: this does not give money to the territory and that fragmentation will also be social and environmental. And we certainly do not believe that there will be controls.”
Lozano appeals to political responsibility because he believes that with the current attitude “it is clear to us that in the towns we are second-class citizens. It’s like telling us that we can drink contaminated water or that we can smell like shit every day. That would never be allowed in a city. In fact, we have seen how a plant has been paralyzed in the Romica industrial estate in Albacete. Why is it allowed in the countryside?”
On January 2, the platforms and citizen groups, together with Stop Ganadería Industrial and Pueblos Vivos Cuenca, will demonstrate at the doors of the Fuensalida Palace, headquarters of the Presidency of Castilla-La Mancha, to show, once again, their disagreement with the industrial livestock policy in the autonomous community. It won’t be the only one. Stop Ganadería Industrial is studying mobilizations in other parts of Spain. “Older people who live in the villages have been breaking their backs all their lives, and when they can rest we punish them… All for the economy.”
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