‘Guide to Landscape Integration Criteria for Wind Farms’

On November 26, 2007, the Spanish State ratified the European Landscape Convention (ELC). With this ratification, which came into effect on March 1, 2008, the signatory countries share the agreements and determinations of this international convention aimed at promoting the protection, management, and planning of European landscapes and organizing European cooperation in landscape matters.

In this context, Galicia was the third Autonomous Community after Valencia and Catalonia to establish its own legal framework on landscape with the approval of Law 7/2008, of July 7, on the protection of the landscape of Galicia. This law, inspired by the principles of the European Landscape Convention (ELC), promotes the full integration of the landscape into all sectoral policies that affect it. Without a doubt, wind energy is one of the activities that involves an intense transformation of landscapes.

Law 7/2008, with the international terminology expressed in the CEP, defines the landscape as "any part of the territory as perceived by the population, whose character is the result of the action and interaction of natural and human factors." That is to say, landscape is any place as it is observed, understood, and valued by society. As mentioned, the scale of the wind turbines as well as their location, generally in dominant points of the landscape, make their visual exposure very high, causing, depending on the host landscape, strong contrasts with it and the consequent sense of impact on the population that observes them.

That is why the first objective of this guide is to establish a framework for reflection regarding the landscape integration of wind farms. This objective is also part of the set of actions that the Xunta de Galicia is carrying out to inform, educate, and raise awareness in society regarding landscape matters.