The fishermen will mobilize and They will use “all their weapons” to defend their livelihoods and a moratorium on government plans to install wind turbines at sea, according to the president of the National Federation of Fishermen’s Corporations (FNCP), Basilio Otero.
The fishing sector feels “ignored” by the government in its maritime spatial planning plans, as Otero said in an interview with EFE in the podcast “Efeagro Punto de Encuentro”, in reaction to the decree royal presented this week by the Executive which regulates the installation of wind turbines.
Otero is also president of the Fisheries Defense Platform, which legally challenged the wind farm projects, a dispute that took it to the Constitutional Court.
According to him, The royal decree presented this week “gives more wings to wind energy” and does not provide for progress for its coexistence with fishing.
Fishermen argue that until there are scientific reports on the impact of wind turbines on biodiversity, there should be a “moratorium” and auctions should be delayed, according to Otero, who deplored the wind energy “gold rush” on the Spanish coast, which he said endangers “the livelihood” of the fleet.
According to Otero, the fishermen are part of a working group with the Ministry of Ecological Transition (Miteco) and have had meetings in which researchers from the Spanish Oceanographic Institute have themselves set up “on the table” uncertainty about the impact of factories on fishing grounds.
“We are not against offshore wind power, we obviously want a strong environment and decarbonization, but we must remember that we are the economic activity that emits the least CO2 into the atmosphere per kilo of product (… ) An energy transition that costs jobs in fishing will not be fair,” he added.
“We ask the Ministry and the Spanish Wind Energy Association to dialogue, but if it doesn’t work, we will go where we need to go to defend the interests of the fleet,” declared the president of the FNCP.
“We are not going to let our sector die by changing sectors and letting our people buy fish from outside (…) if they step on our toes, we will use all weapons to tell the consumer what what he intends to do and how he wants to do it”, according to Otero.
Miteco manages the Demographic Challenge zone and “specifically fixed population fishing: “No one would think of Llanes (Asturias) or Malpica (Galicia) if there was no fishing port,” he added.
He also expressed the “disappointment” of the fishing sector towards environmental organizations, for not having moved more and for not having “accompanied” them in this matter.
