“Traditional livestock farming, yes. With Pepe and his sheep, we have nothing to complain about!”, reads the banner carried by two teenagers. Next to them, a man holds another placard with a simple and categorical message: “We want good wine, not so much pork”. A hundred residents of Villatuelda – in Burgos – and neighboring towns have been mobilizing for weeks to demonstrate their rejection of macro-farms and biogas plants in the face of a project that has been weighing on them since 2018: the creation of a macro-farm with 749 pigs.
The number is not insignificant: 749, and not 750, so that the procedures for implementing this exploitation remain the responsibility of the Villatuelda City Council and do not have to go through the requirements established by the Department of the Environment of the Junta de Castilla y León, as stated by Ángel García, mayor of this small Burgos municipality of 53 inhabitants.
Neighbors and council are rowing in the same direction: opposition to the project which is waiting for some minimal modifications to be corrected so that it must be approved, without any other option, by the government team, as the councilor indicated.
“They are destroying what is authentic in the villages,” sums up Mauro González, a resident of the municipality. Villatuelda belongs to the Ribera del Duero, a region halfway between Burgos and Valladolid, which gives its name to the wine designation of origin ―with wineries also in Soria―. The region is seeing biogas plants, which exploit agricultural waste, and macro-farms spring up in its towns.
The Regulatory Council of Appellations of Origin itself has already expressed its public complaint against an “exclusionary industry” that “endangers” the livelihoods of winegrowers. From the DO, they point out that this activity “invades” with its emissions the field of the other, “preventing it from continuing its activity, only because normatively they can do so”.
Villatuelda, a city “always” under threat
The shadow of the uncertain future of these villages has been hanging over Villatuelda for years. The town has “the peculiarity” of having “always” been “threatened”, as Mauro González assures us. First since the 70s, with a project to build a marsh, and since 2018 with this macro-exploitation.
The townspeople wonder why or who is now considering planning pig farms or macro-farms and biogas processing centres. All this with the past difficulties “after 45 years” of trying to build the territory with the vineyard. For Mauro, there is an explanation: since there are many small towns in the area, the lack of inhabitants and neighbourhood action makes this economic model flourish. “Deep down, they say: Wow, these people here don’t complain, they can’t say anything here, they’re not going to make a fuss here,” he theorises.
Water pollution
Another aspect that casts serious doubts on the compatibility between man and the pig sector is the lack of water. In Villatuelda, as in many towns in La Ribera, you cannot drink tap water, the water in this municipality contains 134 milligrams of nitrate per liter, the limit amount set by the World Health Organization (WHO) is 50 milligrams per liter. “In nitrates, we are the champions,” jokes Mauro.
“If they take water, which they can do, they can also take it away from the city and it’s not like we have water everywhere. Today we are having a very good summer,” says the councilor. García invokes the body that controls water use, the Duero Hydrographic Conference, as well as the Ministry of the Environment, to prevent the city from being left without water.
Precisely, Mauro González explains with indignation how, in a meeting with the CHD, a commissioner assured that people had to “eat” and that the farms had to be placed “somewhere”. “Farms are not the devil”, he remembers saying. The truth is that in 2022, 60% of the pork produced in Spain will be exported and the meat of one in four of these animals will go to China, according to the environmental organization WWF based on data from the Ministry of Agriculture.
More “disadvantages” than “advantages”
To these “inconveniences”, the mayor and the neighbor add the degradation of the environment. The quality of the water is already at a bad starting point, it would be necessary to add to the damage caused to the quality of the air and the soil. Such exploitation would directly affect agricultural production and the quality of life of the inhabitants. “It is a public danger, not only because of the smells, but also because of the pollution, it is against health”, deplores Mauro.
The councilor highlights the negative impact of the macrofarm on the quality of life of the inhabitants, on the traditional agricultural activity and on the tourist attraction of the region. “If all the cities try to repopulate, even if one or five neighbors come, if suddenly they introduce this industry, it will make us go down even lower,” he explains.
Nor is wine and agricultural activity exempt. The vineyard captures the odors, not to mention that the workers have to breathe the odors and live with the mosquitoes, as García warns. The councilor adds that the slurry ponds are what they generate, with the risk that this entails.
González and García agree that the viability of tourism is also being questioned. In addition to the wineries and gastronomic sector of the Ribera del Duero, we must add the tourist appeal of towns such as Peñaranda de Duero, a so-called “pretty” town, or the archaeological site of the Roman city of Clunia. “It seems paradoxical, doesn’t it? ‘That they are planning a landfill in your garden,’ jokes the neighbor.
Another disadvantage, as the mayor points out, is that all road traffic will have to pass through the center of the city due to the location of the farm, which is 1.8 kilometers from the city – the minimum distance is 1 kilometer -. “They can enter at any time. I don’t care if it’s one in the morning, three or four in the afternoon, full of pigs, food or dead animals. They have to go through there no matter what. That’s the biggest disadvantage there is,” says García.
Among the advantages, according to neighbors and mayors, is the creation of “up to five jobs.” A question that does not appeal to the councilor and that Mauro disdains, considering that Villatuelda has and generates enough jobs for the residents and for all those who wish to settle there.
Lack of powers to prevent the project
Another of the cries of this city is to complain about the lack of defense against projects that will potentially affect their way of life and quality of life and that will come to fruition without taking them into account. The city councilor accuses the feeling of helplessness in the face of decisions that are beyond his direct control.
“I am mayor and I cannot control the environment.” [las competencias]I don’t have the ability to do it, nor the legality, nor the way to do it, so it must be okay. [la Consejería] to see it. We don’t have the tools, those at the top do,” he laments, recalling that for a single animal the project does not go through the procedures of the regional administration.
Given the possibility of blocking the agricultural project, García indicates that it could be denounced and disqualified, so he will have to issue the license if the company has corrected the deficiencies. In September, Villatuelda will know the result of the latest reform of the project and will know if the deadlines will continue to be extended or if, on the contrary, it will have to live with a pig farm of 749 sows intended for reproduction.
