Solar Narratives

León (Castilla y León)

Location: León (Castilla y León)
Period: 2022-2025
"Activating a dialogic process to ensure a sustainable ecological transition".

The region of La Sobarriba is located just a few kilometres from the city of León and is mainly made up of the 20 villages and 2 groups of houses that form part of the municipality of Valdefresno. Its landscape is formed by gentle hills of dry land, and is crossed by the Camino de Santiago and situated between the rivers Porma, Bernesga and Torío. In this context, Narrativas Solares was born, which brings together the desire of some neighbours who live in La Sobarriba to make visible the problems and contradictions, both eco-social and on a personal and emotional level, that arise in their territory with the installation of a macro-solar plant.

This fact, which a priori represents a great advance towards decarbonisation, means for many of them, who have been fighting for years in eco-social activism, the university and the defence of rural areas, a hijacking of their environmentalist narratives by the big energy companies.

These people, who are beginning to organise themselves in the Platform in Defence of La Sobarriba, believe that to take on such an oversized extractivist project in this territory is to repeat a model of energy colonisation that has already occurred many times in the province of León with the Riaño reservoir, the underground and open-cast mines in the valleys of Laciana and El Bierzo, and the thermal power plant at La Robla.

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Journal

Of masterships, heroics and mediations

Of masterships, heroics and mediations

Reflection on the process of mediation in its last phase, a moment in which issues such as forms of governance or the constructed link that will remain once the artistic production is concluded come up.
La voz del sol: a process of artistic production in León

La voz del sol: a process of artistic production in León

Solar Narratives proposes to give agency and voice to the sun in the context of sacrificial territories affected by macro solar installations that repeat the extractivist patterns of other energy resources in the territory.
Hands, wishes and knots

Hands, wishes and knots

On 4 November, the mediator, Alfredo Escapa, together with the commissioners and the artist, Auxi Gálvez, carried out a collective activity to start building the sebes that will form the heart of the art piece that will be installed in La Sobarriba.
Tell us and sing to us

Tell us and sing to us

The group of commissioners met in Paradilla de la Sobarriba to begin to define what our artistic commission would be.
A circle as landscape

A circle as landscape

On 4 December, the commissioners and the mediator, Alfredo Escapa, went on a tour of Navafría and Solanilla, one of the places where the installation of the energy infrastructure is planned.

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