The meeting was held in a cordial atmosphere after the assault on the Plenary by a group of ranchers
The representatives of the farmers and the City Council of Lorca decided on Wednesday to continue its administrative processing of the motion that affects the distance of the farms and that caused a demonstration and subsequent assault on the municipal plenary session of a group of farmers on the 31st.
After a meeting of almost three hours in the Department of Urbanism and in a cordial atmosphere, according to the mayor, Diego José Mateos, the parties decided that the motion that caused the disagreement remains as it was initially drafted. It will be submitted for debate in a plenary session to be held next week.
“We are going to attend to the requirements, allegations and claims presented” by those affected and “those that are subject to law and are acceptable to the City Council from a legal point of view will be assumed,” said Mateos. He added that “this is normal procedure” and that ranchers have “wiggle room” to argue. If the motion goes ahead, they will have one month to present arguments and within two months the supra-municipal bodies will issue their reports, so the motion could be definitively approved within three or four months.
The origin of the disagreement between ranchers and the City Council was the situation of nine farms that are pending receiving environmental authorization from the Autonomous Community to be expanded and, according to Mateos, in this period of allegations that will open after the provisional approval of the motion, it will be determined “if there is a transitional regime and under what conditions”.
Mateos assured after the meeting, which was held ten days after the violent assault on the Plenary, that “it is shown that the livestock sector is not the image that was given” and that “they are willing to sit down and talk and reach agreements following procedures, deadlines and formalities. He reiterated that “there is still a long way to go from an administrative point of view” before the change in the urban plan.
The director of the National Association of Pig Livestock Producers, Miguel Ángel Higuera, said that “as a sector we are going to take a step forward” and that the motion “has to follow its processing channels.” He referred to technical issues with which “we are not satisfied” and that have to do with the nine farms whose processing to be expanded was suspended in the final phase and for which the sector requests a transitional regime that excludes them from the new normative.
“We will work with our experts to be able to make the technical observations that can make the Lorca sector prosper” because it is “an innovative sector and farms need to be updated.” He stated on behalf of the pig farmers his “rejection of the incidents that were very unfortunate, the result of individual awareness and that they do not represent much less the farmers or the citizens of Lorca.”