Castelo Branco refuses to roll over for ‘green investment’

The relentless swathe of ‘green energy investments’ taking Portugal by storm is becoming more and more difficult for communities to accept – no matter how ‘absolutely necessary’ the plundering of their territory is made out to be.

In Castelo Branco – where there is a major tussle between the municipality and Danish energy giant Eurowind – regional journalist and newspaper director Fernando Jesus Pires has put the situation into poignant focus.

HIs recent editorial in independent newspaper, O Regiões, is a must-read, in that it could apply to any area of the country where mega-projects are moving in on the basis that Brussels supports the wider plan to change to renewable energies – and Portugal seems intent on becoming ‘a hub for data centres’.

Data centres guzzle electricity (as well as water), ergo, political leaders are quietly ushering in projects that go far beyond supplying the current needs of the country – and people have started working this out.

In the Beira Baixa, for example – making up the entirety of Castelo Branco, and parts of Coimbra and Santarém districts – there are multiple large scale solar/ wind projects, some in the making, others already in operation. The region is one of the ‘champions’ of the government’s Green Map, currently under public consultation, dotted with so-called Renewable Energy Acceleration Zones, where projects are to be given ‘an easy ride’, so that they can set up as quickly as possible.

Says Pires, in his text on the ‘silent war between the ‘green’ of investment, and the raw flesh of landscape of the Beira Baixa’, “Castelo Branco has ceased to be merely a municipality debating land-use planning and has become a fault line where European-scale investment, promises of the energy transition, and a rural reality increasingly pushed to the limits of its resilience, intersect.

“At the centre of this tension is the Mayor, Leopoldo Rodrigues, elected by the Socialist Party (PS), whose stance on this issue has become politically uncomfortable for some and, for others, an example of rare institutional resolve in the face of what is no longer just investment: it is the gradual occupation of the territory under the clean language of “green” energy.

“The Eurowind Energy project, valued at around €1.2 billion and intended to establish a vast wind and solar complex in the area surrounding the Serra da Gardunha, has become the epicentre of a dispute that extends far beyond the municipal level. What is at stake is not merely the location of energy infrastructure, but the very redefinition of what rural territory means in the Beira Baixa at a time when Europe’s energy demands are transforming fields, hills, and valleys into areas of strategic interest.

“The company says it has acted transparently, securing lease agreements for areas larger than those strictly required in order to allow adjustments resulting from dialogue with local authorities, residents, and institutions. On the other side, the municipal executive rejects that interpretation, arguing that the reality of the process reveals a persistent effort to build in environmentally sensitive areas, with irreversible impacts on the landscape, biodiversity, and the continuity of rural life.

“Between these two narratives there is more than disagreement: there is a direct collision of competing claims to legitimacy.

“At the Municipal Assembly meeting on June 29, that clash ceased to be abstract. It became political, public, and irreversible in terms of public discourse. Valter Lemos, president of the Municipal Assembly, outlined the recent course of the process, including meetings between the developer, the municipal executive, and the Parish Council of Louriçal do Campo, revealing a chain of contacts in which full public debate emerged only late in the process or in a fragmented manner.

“Mayor Leopoldo Rodrigues hardened his position and accused the developer of maintaining an almost uncompromising stance regarding alternative locations, while stopping short of turning his criticism into a general opposition to renewable energy. At the political core of the debate, he argued that the issue is not energy itself, but the way it is imposed upon the territory, transforming open countryside into continuous industrial platforms.

“Eurowind Energy responded just as forcefully. The company rejected any accusation of inflexibility, denied refusing institutional dialogue, and challenged the narrative that it had excluded the Municipal Assembly. More than that, it stated that its absence did not reflect a refusal to submit to public scrutiny, but rather a political assessment of a context that it believed was already marked by the municipal executive’s established opposition to the project.

“This disagreement is not an administrative detail. It is the core of a deeper dispute: who controls the narrative of legitimacy in a process where investment presents itself as inevitable and the territory as available?

Castelo Branco mayor, Leopoldo Rodrigues. Image: Facebook

“The company further states that its initial request for a hearing was intended to present the project transparently to all political groups represented in the Municipal Assembly, rather than only to the executive bodies or in restricted meetings. The municipality, meanwhile, maintains that the handling of the process revealed information asymmetries and a dynamic that failed to ensure broad democratic scrutiny.

“At the center of this conflict lies a structural question that extends beyond Castelo Branco: when translated into large-scale projects, the energy transition ceases to be an environmental consensus and becomes a hard-fought territorial dispute, where every hectare is no longer simply landscape but an energy asset.

“It is at this point that the municipal executive’s position acquires greater political weight, while also exposing it to potential political costs. Its advocacy for alternatives—installing solar panels on industrial rooftops, parking lots, urban roofs, already developed infrastructure, and logistical corridors such as railway lines—is presented not as a rejection of the energy future, but as an attempt to prevent the easiest solution from becoming the most destructive for the territory.

“Because the logic of investment is not sentimental. It is mathematical, geographical, and financial. It seeks continuity of land, efficiency of deployment, and scale. The logic of the territory is different: fragmented, ecological, historical, aesthetic, and social. And when these two logics collide, there is no neutral compromise—there is loss, displacement, and imposition.

“The June 23 meeting between the mayor, the president of the Municipal Assembly, and the president of the Parish Council of Louriçal do Campo, held without the participation of the remaining political parties, adds another layer of institutional tension. Not only because of what was discussed, but because of what it symbolises: the difficulty of bringing the full political spectrum into a process with irreversible consequences.

“While the possibility of an extraordinary session of the Municipal Assembly remains under consideration, one thing has already become politically evident and irreversible: the territory has entered a phase of structural pressure in which every local decision carries consequences that extend across generations.

“The Beira Baixa is no longer simply a landscape. It has become a strategic asset. And when that happens, the countryside ceases to be just countryside. It becomes a battlefield—not with noise, but with contracts, permits, megawatts, and administrative decisions that, once made, cannot be undone.

“On this new playing field, local politics no longer arbitrates balances. It struggles to survive between unequal forces. And the territory is no longer protected by intention—it comes to be defined by whoever arrives first with capital and scale.”

These powerful, thought-provoking words, could apply to any number of citizens’ battles ongoing in Portugal right now as ‘green energy projects’ multiply like the mythical Hydra over national territory. They could absolutely apply to the heroic battle ongoing in Covas do Barroso, where citizens feel they have been utterly railroaded into losing prime heritage farmland.

Articles like Fernando José Pires’ are the kind of testaments that balance the ‘hype’ and explain what is happening in the name of ‘clean energy’, in plain sight’. It is very possible that they will encourage more mayors to stand up, and defend their territory as Leopoldo Rodrigues is so valiantly trying to do. Already, ANMP – the national association of Portuguese municipalities – has come out in protest to the government’s Green Map, and as other commentators have stressed, the energy transition can only go well when it is constructed with territories, not imposed upon them.

source: O Regiões (https://www.facebook.com/oRegioes.Jornalismo.Independente)