The Xunta assures that there will not be a specific financing route for Altri to raise its macrocellulose in Galicia. It is the first time that the Galician President, Alfonso Rueda, denies that there will be economic support from the regional coffers directly for this project. A little less than a year ago, in fact, the door did not close to this option. In April 2024, the leader of the PSDEG, José Ramón Gómez Besteiro, asked him in Parliament if the Galician Government was willing to disburse a part of the public funds requested by the company. Rueda replied: “In Galicia for projects that comply environmentally, they create industrial future and create jobs, the Xunta de Galicia will be there.”
The Galician Government now transferred to the central responsibility for the following steps of the project. When, last Friday, the Official Gazette of Galicia (Dog) published the favorable impact statement for Altri, the Minister of Economics and Industry, María Jesús Lorenzana, repeated at a press conference that the future of the factory raised for Palas de Rei (A Ulloa, Lugo) depends “absolutely” on the team directed by Pedro Sánchez. He referred to the plant would need an electrical substation to function. This Monday, President Galician also pointed to the central government, but extended it to public funds. On the part of the Xunta there will not be a specific line designed for this company.
Altri, which has created the Greenfiber company (in association with the CEO of Greenalia, Manuel García Pardo) for its macrocellulose project, has demonstrated on several occasions that it aspires to capture 250 million euros of the Next Generation funds. Rueda said Monday that the question of the financing “corresponds to the company”, which said it supposes that the corresponding agencies will have already been addressed to communicate that the Environmental Impact Declaration is favorable. What the Galician government asks, he defended, is “the same treatment as other projects in Spain” because he criticizes that in other cases public support has been announced before the environmental processing was made.
The Galician President charged again against the central government for maintaining “centralized” the management of the Next Generation funds. With that scheme, he insisted, who aspires to that money must be directed to Madrid. To the concrete question of whether the Xunta has planned specific financing for Altri the answer is “no.” “Because we do not handle those billions that are still pending and without anyone taking advantage of them,” he added.
The Portuguese company said that the viability of the plant depends on the fact that it can receive about 250 million of the more than 900 that it calculates that it must invest in total. In statements to the newspaper Progressthe Director of Institutional Relations of ALTRI, Olga López Arias, admits, however, that they are studying other financing routes if money does not arrive through a belong -strategic projects for the recovery and economic transformation, through which European funds are being channeled–. “We have plan A, B and C to carry out the project,” he said, although he did not specify what the different options consist of and pointed out that the final decision will depend on the shareholders.
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