“Wind energy yes, but not like this”the media repercussions of the wind energy conflict raised by the film As bestas

Resumo

On the night of February 11, 2023, after going up to collect the Goya award for best director for the film As Bestas (2022), Rodrigo Sorogoyen thanked the people of the place where the film was shot, Sabucedo, and the non-professional actors who participated in it for the award. He ended his speech by claiming the conservation of the fauna and flora of this Galician territory, threatened by the project to build four wind farms, with the slogan “Wind energy yes, but not like this”. On March 1, 2023, an article in El País reported the words of the Secretary of State for the Environment, Hugo Morán, in the following headline: “The phrase ‘wind energy yes, but not like this’ actually means ‘wind energy yes, but not here’” (Planelles, 2023). The conflict raised here arises from the planning of a massive implementation of wind farms in the Galician community (a situation that is replicated in other parts of the Spanish territory), taking advantage of the wind capacity and the characteristics of the territory. The magnification of the projects (the creation of macroparks), their effective implementation (sometimes bordering and cheating the current legality) and the consequences that this has on a territory that is presented as emptied (in a clear perversion of the label “emptied Spain”, when this territory is not empty, people still live in it), have generated a social movement, largely disintegrated and local, against it. The protest involves a rethinking of the impact and consequences that this type of energy production can have (not only on the rural population, but also on the cultural and natural heritage of the affected areas), questioning its “green” character (a label that would underline an ecological nature now called into question) and the lack of information and transparency about its implementation and its consequences. It is a protest in multiple spaces and from various agents that questions the energy model that is actually to be implemented and the real character of the energies defined as “renewable”. In the proposed case, an artistic-cultural creation, the film As Bestas, portrays and problematizes the impact that a so-called “renewable” form of energy generation, wind power, has on a specific territory. The director’s discourse goes beyond the screen and collaborates to make a conflict visible, to question and reflect on how the ecological transition should be (or should not be) and to support social mobilization. This discourse obtains a response, critical from the public authorities and grateful from the social mobilization. The main objective of this paper is to reflect on the debate on the wind power conflict arising from a cultural product such as As Bestas, beyond the film itself. To this end, we will describe and analyze the emergence and development of the controversy in the media, compiling and analyzing the news published in three newspapers, one national, one regional and one online. Thus, it is proposed to illustrate one side of the imaginary of the wind power conflict.