Fifteen years without paying electricity. The residents of Alós d'Isil, a town in the municipality of l'Alt Àneu, have not seen an electricity bill since Aprofitaments Energétics de l'Alt Àneu, the company that operated the town's power plant and sold electricity from Endesa went bankrupt. The town has around a hundred homes, six houses occupied all year and the rest second residences. They have continued to receive supplies from Endesa, which has not been able to issue them invoices because they do not have meters.
Endesa knows the electricity consumed by Alós d'Isil through a single meter at the point where its distribution network connects to that of the town, as published by El Segre. They are two and a half kilometers of lines owned by Alt Àneu City Council and the Decentralized Municipal Entity of Isil i Alós. It knows global consumption, but not that of each neighbor or the municipality. Endesa claims that in 2009 it made constant complaints to the old distributor, which did not pay the bills. In 2012, with the bankruptcy already closed, the electricity company started a judicial process to claim the debt which ended with an attempt to cut off and a negotiation not to cut off the supply. Since then, he has been claiming the bill from the City Council. Now, according to the same company, "there is an open negotiation process".
According to the president of the Decentralized Municipal Entity (EMD), Guillem Esteban, the figure rises to 150,000 euros. Esteban points out that the City Council and EMD have been negotiating for some time because they were looking for a solution to the distribution line, which has now been taken over by a "small local distributor".
The City Council wants to pass on the cost to the residents, "because if it doesn't create a comparative grievance with the residents of other towns in the same municipality". Endesa is waiting for the situation of the distribution network, which is privately owned and has been bankrupt for some time, to be regularized. "If there is no distribution network, there is no meter and we do not have an owner to whom to send the bill", they insist, and hope that, "once the situation is resolved, the new owner of the supply, the City Council, can take charge of the payment of outstanding invoices, for which facilities will be offered", he remarks.
