Neighbors around About twenty cities in Spain demonstrated This Saturday in the center of Madrid to ask before the Congress of Deputies that There is legislation for the installation of “macro-industries” such as biogas or biomethane plants or so-called macrofarms, and that these infrastructures are far from homes.
According to the Government Delegation in Madrid, 2,000 people gathered in the demonstration that began in the Plaza de Cibeles and ended in the Plaza de las Cortés, a route made between banging pots and whistles and chants such as “Today it is our city, tomorrow it will be yours” or “up, down, to hell with the plant”.
Already in the Plaza de las Cortés, the demonstrators, with banners from places like La Calahorra (Granada), Cubas de la Sagra (Madrid) or Milagros (Burgos), stressed that, “in the face of the current deregulation in the study and implementation of projects for macro-pig farming and macro-biogas or biomethane installations”, it is necessary to “request national legislationunanimous, clear and obligatory.”
“We are not unaware of the need to valorize waste, nor to obtain energy in a more sustainable way, as many promoters of these projects insist on making us see. What we are asking for is responsibility. It is necessary for legislation to prevent economic speculation on our health and our environment”, they advocated in the manifesto read near the Congress of Deputies.
Eduardo Adán Almeida, president of the neighborhood association Fight for Torrejón de la Calzada and organizer of this state demonstration, explained to EFE that neighbors from “between 18 and 20 villages” from all over the country arrived in Madrid, “united by the same cause.”
Although in the case of the Madrid municipality of Torrejón de la Calzada, “we managed to stop the biogas plant project,” celebrated the president of the neighborhood association, “what we want is for the legislation to be passed, through the central government, and then the autonomous, so that “these macro-industries do not end up “under the windows” neighbors of the cities of Spain.
According to Adán Almeida, the leaders “rely on the fact that in Europe biogas plants coexist with citizens, but the European guidelines say that they must listen to the people and that they cannot enter into conflict.” “Since they enter into conflict and these are projects” surrounded by obscurantism, “we want legislation to be legislated,” summarized the president of Luchando por Torrejón de la Calzada.
