Falces, the idyllic town complete with wind

Cierzo, as it is known in Navarre, is the fresh, dry wind that comes from the northeast, which has been caressing the fertile plains of Falces long before the Romans settled in this region of gentle climate in the 2nd Century AD. They called this place ‘Falcis’, which in Latin signifies curved hoes or knives, after its early agriculture vocation, or the meandering trace drawn by the Arga river gently coursing aside the town.

Falces has always pursued its romance with the wind which tempers its climate and airs its fields. When it whistles down the lanes and alleys of the town, it’s as if you can sometimes hear the famous notes of the saxophone played by one of the town’s most famous sons, Pedro Iturralde, the lauded composer and jazz musician who spread the name of his birthplace far and wide as he took to the stage with the likes of Donna Hightower.

The same wind has, for the past 20 years or so, become a source of employment and development for this municipality of 2,300 inhabitants situated in the central region of Navarre, 57 kilometers south of Pamplona. Prosperity is now associated with the wind farms installed in the district - on common land owned by the municipality – which have given its economy a new face, linked to clean technologies and the energy transition.

AWARD WINNING INSTALLATIONS

The Spanish Wind Power Business Association, the organization that represents the main wind energy operators, technological centers and other players in the Spanish wind power sector, in 2015 awarded Falces the Eolo Prize for Rural Integration of Wind Power, for the way it had helped wind energy fit into the local environment.

“For Falces this is a great honor,” says Valentín. “We have become known for something as important as renewable energy, so necessary today. We have got used to living with the wind farms and most people understand the benefit they bring to the town.”

Falces is certainly an ideal example of harmony between past and future, tradition and modernity, testified to by the modern agricultural practices irrigated by the Navarre Canal, the basis of a growing food industry with roots in hundreds of years of cultivating the flagship product, garlic – rated among the best garlic in the world, and not only by the locals! Farm machinery, food processing, vehicles, winegrowing and auxiliary industries serving the wind farms, are just some of the activities in which the folk of Falces endeavor to maintain an above-average quality of life.

The locals have also shown they know how to maintain their traditions – from the famous Pilón bull run, dating back to the 18^th C., an extreme event with brava heifers that career through the town’s steep lanes during the August festival – while opening up to modernity and a new wind that – like the avant-garde jazz of Pedro Iturralde – already forms part of its identity and life.

WIND TURBINES IMITATING THE LANDSCAPE

Moncayuelo wind farm was the first to be installed at Falces in 2004 and is unique, probably the only one to be signed off by an artist. Painter Pedro Salaberri, well known in Navarre, was commissioned to design the color of each of the 32, 80-meter-high, turbine towers, using tones that complement the surrounding countryside. The result is a harmonious dialog between nature and technology in shades of green and ochre.

The Vedadillo substation is also a fine example of how to integrate an industrial facility into a rural environment. Built in stone and adobe, in the style of the traditional architecture of the region, no one would say from outside that its interior housed transformers, cables, electric cabinets and the rest of the equipment needed to raise the voltage of the electricity generated to inject it into the grid. Quite the opposite. In fact, the most remarkable structure in the cereal fields around the building is the pointed old oven, a reminder of the traditional uses of these lands and the people that embody them.