The Xunta de Galicia (Government of Galicia) welcomed the ruling, stating that the court ruling “opens the door to lifting the suspension of another 64 wind farms” in the region. The regional government defends its commitment to renewables and considers wind energy a fundamental pillar for the decarbonization of the economy.
Despite the strong support it had already given to the processing of wind farms in Galicia in two rulings issued in December 2023 and January 2024 regarding the Xunta’s authorizations to repower EDP’s Corme wind farm in the municipality of Ponteceso, in an unusual decision, the Supreme Court agreed to review its own jurisprudence just a few months later. This time, the project to build a 40.5-megawatt (MW) Greenalia wind turbine complex from scratch in Coristanco and Santa Comba was in the spotlight. The High Court of Galicia (TSXG) overturned the permits following a complaint from the Association for the Ecological Defense of Galicia (Adega) and the Platform for the Defense of the Cantabrian Mountains, repeating the same reasons it gave for annulling the approval of the Corme wind farm’s technological renovation.
The Supreme Court has overturned the decision of the High Court of Galicia (TSXG) that annulled the permit for the Campelo wind farm, located between the municipalities of Coristanco and Santa Comba. The Fifth Section of the Third Chamber of the Supreme Court, after deliberating on the appeals filed by the developer Greenalia, the Xunta de Galicia, and the Galician Wind Farm Association, has upheld the legality of the administrative agreement that allowed the construction of the farm.
The controversy centered on the alleged improper fragmentation of the project, alleged by the TSXG (Spanish Government of Galicia), which had provisionally halted the works in October 2022 and revoked the authorization in June 2023. However, the Supreme Court has established new case law, clarifying that the sharing of connection facilities between wind farms does not necessarily imply the existence of a single project for environmental assessment purposes.
According to the Supreme Court, the TSXG’s decision deviated from the case law established in previous rulings. The high court upheld the individual environmental assessment conducted by the Xunta de Galicia (Government of Galicia), considering that the wind farms are independent even though they share connection infrastructure.
