Last February, President Pedro Sánchez visited Torrevieja and announced that the expansion of the largest desalination plant in Europe would include a solar plant intended to supply much of the high electrical energy that the desalination process currently requires.
Acuamed, the public company that manages the installation, estimates that photovoltaics will contribute around 40% of the desalination plant's electrical consumption. The power to be installed exceeds 70 megawatts, and it must be remembered that in plants that exceed 50 they are the responsibility of the state, below that amount the Generalitat is the competent administration.
But, as is happening in other areas of Spain and the Valencian Community, the plant has collided with opposition from the neighborhood of the town chosen to locate it, in this case, San Miguel de Salinas.
There have already been several protests held, but today, Tuesday, the most significant one to date will take place, in the capital of the province, in front of the doors of the Government Subdelegation in Alicante.
To attend the demonstration, the San Miguel City Council itself will charter buses, and on its website urges residents to go to Alicante on Tuesday, May 7 "against the macro solar plant in the San Miguel orchard."
The council is governed in a minority by Mayor Juan de Dios Fresneda, whose party, the PSOE, has 6 councilors; the PP has 4, Vox 2 and EUPV 1. All groups oppose the project. The municipal call “for citizen mobilization of all political groups, the neighborhood association and farmers” could reach Madrid if the complaints do not find a satisfactory response, according to municipal sources.
The city council and neighborhood association have requested a meeting at the Ministry for the Ecological Transition and Demographic Challenge to expose the harmful effects that they believe the installation will cause on 200 hectares of the “most fertile lands” in this area of the Vega Baja.
Those affected remember that the desalinated water produced by the Torrevieja plant is intended primarily for irrigation of the intensive cultivation of Campo de Cartagena and other communities of Murcian agricultural companies, and for the urban supply of Alicante and Murcia in case of extreme drought. They have proposed alternatives, such as taking advantage of the public land in the post-transfer canals to locate the photovoltaic panels instead of expropriating agricultural land, or using the Alicante-Cartagena highway, as is already being done in other places.
