The socialist Senate candidate Ángel Moleón is calling for a rapid expansion of electricity grid capacity in Navarre At a campaign event on 15 November in Estella he said the additional capacity should benefit the whole region of northern Spain. He linked the call to industrial development, employment and the fight against rural depopulation in rural areas.
Moleón is standing in Spain’s parliamentary election on 29 November for the alliance Senado de Progreso, roughly “Senate of Progress” in English. He announced that his party would press in the Congress of Deputies and the Senate for expansion plans to move forward as soon as possible. Environmental requirements would have to be strictly observed.
The candidate referred to an announcement by Spain’s Ministry for the Ecological Transition. Its new plan provides for an additional 1.6 gigawatts of electrical capacity for Navarra, he said. However, a planned increase in capacity is not the same as connections already being available. Moleón did not give a specific date when businesses could use the additional power.
According to him, businesses in the area around Estella suffer short power cuts that halt production. Existing businesses cannot expand their operations because of a lack of capacity, while others have been unable to set up there for the same reason. These are the candidate’s claims, not an independently established account of the state of the electricity supply.
Moleón also sees grid expansion as a way to offer young people work close to where they live. In his view, this could help them avoid having to leave their villages. This does not establish that new infrastructure will in fact lead to specific businesses setting up or to a quantifiable number of additional jobs.
Also speaking at the event was Jesús María Rodríguez, who is also standing for the alliance in the Senate. He called for rural areas and municipalities at risk of depopulation to be involved in the energy transition According to him, two out of every three municipalities in the area around Estella are at serious risk of depopulation. The affected places must be involved in infrastructure planning, and environmental and social standards must be taken into account.
Editor: Phillipe Schmidt-Araguin (Article created with AI assistance).