SOS Rural: 100,000 Olive Trees Felled in Jaén and Córdoba

100,000 fewer olive trees so others can sell electricity

How many olive trees must be uprooted to make a photovoltaic plant profitable? In Lopera, a municipality in the province of Jaén, the circulating answer is uncomfortable: enough that felling counts in the thousands. SOS Rural’s complaint, accompanied by images of devastated land, estimates 100,000 affected olive trees between Jaén and Córdoba. This figure, repeated in public debate, is just the tip of the iceberg in a conflict pitting two incompatible narratives against each other: energy transition versus rural areas losing their trees.

This is not an isolated case. In the Cordoban hamlet of Morente, residents have organized against solar mega-plants that would occupy the equivalent of 840 football pitches. Across Córdoba province, more than 600 hectares of olive groves and over 50,000 olive trees are under threat. The overarching question is significant: aren’t there enough barren lands in Spain to install these panels?

Why fell olive trees instead of using drylands?

The short answer is that flat land with grid access and no administrative hurdles is scarce. The long answer involves energy evacuation: power lines dictate where plants can connect, pushing developers toward already electrified zones. Some argue this explains the entire map. Counter-arguments highlight that Spain has plenty of low-agronomic-value, high-radiation land, particularly north of Albacete, which remains unused for this purpose.

Optimistic calculations assume plants are built where the grid allows. Pessimistic scenarios suggest profitable agricultural soil is cheaper to expropriate than to buy on the open market. Analyses note that expropriation is exceptional and usually tied to evacuation lines, not the installation itself. Yet the practical effect is identical: owners unwilling to sell lose their plots.

Expropriating one private entity to benefit another

Here the issue shifts from environmental to economic. Criticism targets not renewables in abstract, but the mechanism: a private business expropriates another private business. If developers want the land, they should pay the asking price; if it’s too expensive, they should look elsewhere. Forced expropriation, designed for general-interest infrastructure, ends up serving as a cost-reduction tool for specific promoters.

Parallels with urban planning expropriations are inevitable. Land is seized so developers profit, with administration participating via royalties. With photovoltaics, the pattern repeats under a different guise: green energy.

Olive groves take 25 years to recover

Agronomic arguments weigh heavily. A centenary olive tree cannot be replanted in two seasons. Once uprooted, restoring maximum production takes decades. This isn’t just any crop: Spain leads global olive oil production, with Jaén and Córdoba at its heart. Destroying this base to install panels represents, according to this view, a transfer of food sovereignty to an energy oligopoly.

The paradox is twofold. First, centenary olives have market values in the thousands of euros and aren’t destroyed arbitrarily. Second, oil from irrigated hedge-row olives—harvested by machine, pruned by articulated arms—will end up in few hands who set prices at will. The result would be a specialized primary sector with few workers and many technicians, in a country that has led OECD unemployment for decades.

The real business: who profits from felling?

Specific developer names circulate, alongside suspicion that the ultimate beneficiary isn’t consumers paying bills, but investment funds buying cheap land. The described sequence: trees are felled, panels installed, traditional farmers sell at rock-bottom prices due to unprofitability or retirement, and funds acquire good land. Then come hedge-row olives and irrigation. Finally, oil sold at whatever price they choose.

Another point raised: plants aren’t promoted on rooftops. Distributed energy, which individuals could generate at home, doesn’t suit the same business model requiring vast tracts of land. This observation connects with classic critiques of industrial reconversion: someone always pays for the party.

What about climate while trees are felled?

Climate arguments appear, often ironically. If the goal is curbing climate change, why choose land that captures CO2 and produces food? Official responses lack the urgency the matter demands. Meanwhile, soil, landscape, and agrarian output lose. So far, only someone’s bottom line gains.

The ball is in the court of regional and national authorities. Expropriations proceed, projects advance, and residents of Lopera and Morente continue organizing. There is no resolution yet. Only a question unanswered with concrete numbers: if thousands of hectares of unused dryland exist, why target olive trees?