A Catalan plan for renewable energy is currently deciding the future of an area that spans three Spanish regions, including ours. The area hosts a myriad of protected species, from protected vultures and ibex to rare eagles and a variety of bats – and draws tourists from all over.
Most people have never heard of this plan; that’s partly because the PLATER proposal is presented as a purely Catalan energy plan, and information circulates almost exclusively in Catalan. However, some of its proposed priority zones run right along the borders with Aragón and Valencia, including a cross-border nature reserve that regional governments have spent decades protecting and restoring.
This article makes three points.
- If PLATER goes ahead in its current form, it could seriously damage landscape and thus the rural tourism economy in parts of southern Catalonia and neighbouring Aragón.
- It would affect wildlife in ways that protected-areas can’t prevent.
- Better alternatives exist, and some are already part of Catalonia’s official energy policy.
That third point is what turns this from “not my problem” into an interesting case study. This piece is about the mistakes that get made when renewable energy targets meet implementation.
The PLATER proposal in 30 seconds
PLATER (Pla Territorial Sectorial per a la Generació Elèctrica Eòlica i Fotovoltaica) is the Catalan regional government’s draft plan identifying priority areas for future wind and solar development. It will help determine where much of Catalonia’s renewable energy infrastructure is built over the coming decades.
Critics argue that the current proposal places too much development in biodiverse rural areas, particularly along the Aragón border, instead of making fuller use of already-built land and repowering existing wind farms. The landscapes, wildlife and rural economies affected don’t stop at Catalonia’s borders. Decisions made under PLATER could have consequences for neighbouring regions, including Aragón and Valencia.
Why Catalonia needs more renewable energy
This part isn’t in dispute: Catalonia has a well-documented energy problem, and expanding the infrastructure is necessary and unavoidable.
Catalonia’s long-term energy strategy, PROENCAT 2050, commits the region to a fully renewable, decarbonized and denuclearized electricity system by 2050, requiring almost 62,000 MW of renewable capacity. PLATER is the draft plan that needs to determine where that new wind and solar generation could be built.
As of late 2025, Catalonia had around 1,400 MW of onshore wind and 440 MW of ground-mounted solar installed; enough to cover roughly 15% of current electricity demand, but the remaining 85% presents a challenge.
The biggest challenge is nuclear power. Catalonia’s three operating reactors currently produce more than half of the region’s electricity, but they are scheduled to close between 2030 and 2035 under Spain’s national radioactive waste plan.
The other challenge is energy dependency: Catalonia imports a significant share of its electricity from neighbouring regions (14.2% in 2023). Catalonia’s wind energy association, EolicCat, argues this leaves the region dependent on (and paying for) electricity generated elsewhere instead of producing more of its own renewable energy.
Where the plan falls short
Most people can agree with Catalonia’s need for more renewable energy so far – but where and how it happens is a different story. PROENCAT 2050 set renewable energy targets, but doesn’t specify where this new infrastructure should go. Those decisions are left to PLATER, and now the subject of heavy debate.
The draft plan identifies “priority zones” considered suitable for wind or solar development based on factors like wind resources, solar exposure, distance from settlements and agricultural productivity. The zones exclude high-quality farmland, but doesn’t take scenic landscapes and ecologically important areas into account.
For wind, “suitable” and “priority” are one and the same: of the 18% of Catalan territory identified as suitable for wind turbines, all 100% of it is designated “priority zone”. This means there’s no real distinction between land where a wind farm merely could go and land where the plan considers development preferable; in short, wind turbines could start popping up anywhere that’s not been disqualified.
What follows focuses on one particular stretch of the plan: the priority zones along the Aragón border, in Terra Alta.
Catalonia’s climate legislation gives priority to installing solar panels on rooftops, industrial estates, car parks and other already-developed land before using open countryside. PLATER’s targets put just over 40% of new solar capacity on already-developed land, something GEPEC argues falls well short of what is possible.
Wind energy is different; turbines can’t be built on rooftops, so development on open land is inevitable. In Terra Alta, however, the balance is off: the plan includes almost nine times more wind capacity than solar (1,792.6 MW assigned to wind vs 211.7 MW for solar).
Information about PLATER has been circulating for weeks, but mostly in Catalan. That makes it easy for people elsewhere in Spain, or even just across the regional border, to assume this isn’t their issue.
I live in Matarranya, just across the border from Terra Alta. At first, I stayed out of it: we live off-grid and generate our own solar power, so it felt hypocritical to oppose wind turbines or solar fields on principle alone. But when neighbours prompted me to look into it, I realised this isn’t about a couple of ugly windmills; it’s about the future of an area that supports rural tourism, and about wildlife whose range extends across Catalonia, Aragón and Valencia. These animals don’t recognise administrative boundaries, and neither do many of the people whose livelihoods depend on the beautiful countryside.
Impact on rural tourism
The border area between Terra Alta (Catalonia) and Matarranya (Aragón) backs onto the Els Ports/Puertos de Beceite massif. It’s a destination for hiking, cycling, birdwatching, photography and agritourism, and it attracts visitors from across Spain and beyond. It’s also a sparsely populated region where tourism is one of the few industries that helps keep small villages alive.
The concern isn’t hypothetical: the first wind farms arrived in Terra Alta in the late 1990s, promoted as a revulsivo – a catalyst for investment, jobs and economic renewal in a struggling rural comarca. Three decades later, a Público investigation describes a landscape that has been profoundly transformed, while the promised employment and training opportunities never happened. Terra Alta remains one of Catalonia’s most depopulated comarcas.
In the meantime, the landscape itself has become one of the area’s greatest assets – visitors come here because it’s a relatively unspoilt corner of Spain. That makes changing that landscape an economic issue as much as an environmental one.
Impact on wildlife – even outside reserve boundaries
The issue that’s even closer to my heart is the wildlife in and around the Els Ports/Puertos de Beceite national park. The massif is part of a cross-border Natura 2000 site shared by Catalonia, Aragón and Valencia. It hosts a reintroduction programme for the bearded vulture and is also home to griffon vultures, golden eagles, Bonelli’s eagles, Egyptian vultures, peregrine falcons, eagle owls and one of the richest bat communities on the Iberian Peninsula.
Migration and movement routes
Because Natura 2000 sites are formally excluded from PLATER’s priority zones, it’s easy to assume the wildlife they protect is automatically safe. However, protected areas safeguard habitats, but animal lives extend well beyond the line on the map. Large birds of prey routinely travel 10-50 kilometres between nesting, roosting and feeding areas. A wind turbine can be built outside a protected area while still posing a direct risk to species that live in and around it.
Aragón’s wildlife recovery programme recorded more than 4,500 protected animals killed by wind infrastructure between 2020 and 2023, with vultures and black kites among the most affected species. Because vultures live long and reproduce slowly, even relatively small increases in adult mortality can have significant long-term effects on population recovery.
South Catalonia also sits between two of Europe’s main bird migration routes. Many migratory species use the Els Ports mountains as a natural navigation corridor, stopping there to rest and feed before continuing their journey.
It’s not only birdsthough: roads, fencing and other infrastructure can fragment the routes of ground-based mammals, making it more difficult for them to move between habitats – or put them at risk when they try to cross. This directly impacts biodiversity.
Habitat loss and fragmentation
Wind and solar developments affect far more than the footprint of a turbine or a solar panel. Building a wind farm means clearing vegetation for turbine foundations, crane platforms and access roads; building a solar park means fencing off and levelling a stretch of land.
Catalonia’s own environmental guidance for renewable energy projects acknowledges the risks: development on previously undisturbed land can affect soils, vegetation, landscape quality and ecological connectivity – the ability of species to move freely between habitats.
Many of the objections submitted during PLATER’s public consultation warn that concentrated development could fragment the region’s mosaic agroforestal – the patchwork of farmland, scrub, and forest that lets wildlife move across the countryside, preventing them from becoming isolated within protected areas.
Soil and water
Last but not least, there’s a less visible impact that rarely comes up outside environmental assessments.
Constructing wind farms means excavating large foundations and bringing heavy machinery onto site, to then set an incredibly heavy turbine in place. The resulting soil compaction reduces the ground’s ability to absorb and retain water, while increasing erosion on sloping terrain.
On its own, that’s a relatively minor issue – but with many turbines, kilometres of access roads and dozens of wind farms in a single comarca, however, the impact accumulates.
Besides, the new turbines proposed by PLATER aren’t the first.
Earlier wind farm projects
In April 2026, the Catalan regional government (the Generalitat) authorised three new wind farms comprising 31 turbines in the Terra Alta municipalities of Batea and La Pobla de Massaluca, despite unfavourable reports from both local councils, the Terra Alta county council (Consell Comarcal), the farmers’ union and the environmental organisation GEPEC. Some turbines would stand less than 50 metres from the Natura 2000 boundary, placing species like the red kite, griffon vulture, golden eagle and several bat species at increased risk. Approving PLATER means adding more on top.
In the approval process, the three wind farms were assessed individually rather than as a whole. When the Terra Alta Consell Comarcal reviewed the application, it explicitly noted that evaluating each wind farm separately meant their cumulative environmental impact was never properly considered.
There’s a related example just across the Aragón border: the proposed Clúster Matarraña, four wind farms planned along the Matarraña and Algars rivers. Spain’s national environmental authority issued an unfavourable environmental impact declaration, concluding the project was incompatible with protecting local wildlife – and the project never went through.
A nearly identical, even larger development nearby (the Clúster Maestrazgo, with similar terrain, similar Natura 2000 and ZEPA designations, and similar environmental objections) had already been approved a year earlier. That approval is now the subject of a corruption investigation into allegations that a former ministry official improperly fast-tracked it.
Available alternatives
Criticising a plan is easy; in this case though, workable alternatives already exist.
PLATER’s critics aren’t saying Catalonia should abandon its ambitions for renewable energy; however, they argue that new capacity can be delivered in places where the environmental and social costs are lower.
More could be developed on already-built land
Of PLATER’s nearly 62,000 MW renewable target (wind and solar combined), only around 22% is planned for already-developed land. The remaining 78% would be built on open countryside. That doesn’t match Catalonia’s own climate legislation, which gives priority to rooftops, industrial estates, car parks and other already-developed land before using undeveloped countryside or agricultural land.
GEPEC argues that renewable generation should be concentrated as close as possible to cities, industrial areas and existing infrastructure, where the environmental impact is generally far lower than in biodiverse rural areas.
That raises an obvious question: if already-developed land is officially the preferred option, why is such a large share of future capacity still planned for open countryside in the PLATER proposal?
Repowering: replacing old turbines
A second opportunity lies in repowering existing wind farms. This means replacing older turbines with fewer, larger, and far more efficient ones – on sites that have already been developed for the purpose. It avoids opening up entirely new landscapes, while increasing electricity generation with infrastructure that’s already there.
This is already Catalonia’s official policy: in June 2026, the first major repowering project, at Les Colladetes in Baix Ebre, downsized the wind farm from 54 ageing turbines to just 8 modern ones, while increasing output by 79%.
The Generalitat wants this to become the model for wind farms built between 1999 and 2010. Six more repowering projects are already in the pipeline, including Mudèfer I and II in Terra Alta itself.
Repowering alone won’t solve Catalonia’s energy challenge though. With today’s technology, replacing all 46 eligible wind farms would increase total wind generation only marginally. It’s one part of the solution, but not a complete alternative to PLATER. The broader point: before opening up new stretches of countryside, let’s maximise the potential of sites that are already developed.
Growing pushback in Catalonia
The debate is not confined to environmental organisations: more than 180 Catalan municipalities across 30 comarcas have signed a manifest against PLATER, calling for the current process to be halted and the proposal reconsidered.
In July 2026, the Republican Left party (ERC) in Terra Alta formally opposed further wind development in the comarca until other parts of Catalonia contribute a fairer share. Their argument is simple: Terra Alta has already exceeded its 2030 PLATER target, with 409 MW of installed wind capacity, while many other comarcas remain well behind objectives.
The criticism is increasingly difficult to ignore: the issue isn’t how much renewable energy Catalonia builds, but where that development is concentrated.
What we can do
PLATER is still open to public input. The consultation period runs from 29 April until 30 July 2026. After that, the Generalitat will review submissions before producing a revised version of the plan. The final decree is expected in early 2027.
Anyone can submit an allegation; you don’t need to live in Catalonia. The easiest way to object as an individual is the generator built by Transició Energètica Justa. Fill in your details, and it produces a ready-to-sign PDF with 32 pre-written grounds for objection, which you then submit via a petition form addressed to ICAEN. This tool is for individuals only: not companies, associations or town councils, and not people directly affected as landowners (they need a different form).
If you’d rather go directly through official channels, submissions can also be made through the Institut Català d’Energia (ICAEN), and Olius.cat has a step-by-step guide. Catalonia’s public participation portal also hosts an open discussion thread, “Aturem el PLATER”.
Besides submitting an allegation, you can help by sharing the PLATER map, this information and supporting organisations working on the issue: GEPEC, the Fundación para la Conservación del Quebrantahuesos, SEO/BirdLife, and locally, Terra Alta Viva. If you’re in Aragón or Valencia, you can also ask your local or regional government to formally raise concerns about cross-border impact.
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