B1 · Intermediate
11 min
energyenvironmentspanish historyeconomicsgeopolitics
Forty Years Late to the Sun
España dejó de malgastar el sol
Spain gets more sun than almost anywhere in Europe, yet for decades it ran on imported oil and coal. Fletcher and Octavio trace the arc of Spain's solar boom: its historical roots, the spectacular 2008 crash, and what's actually happening on the ground right now.
España tiene más horas de sol que casi cualquier país de Europa, pero durante décadas dependió del petróleo y el carbón extranjeros. Fletcher y Octavio exploran el boom solar español: sus raíces históricas, el colapso de 2008 y lo que está pasando ahora.
8 essential B1-level terms from this episode, with translations and example sentences in Spanish.
| Spanish | English | Example |
|---|---|---|
| apostar por | to bet on; to commit to; to put your faith in | El gobierno apuesta por las energías renovables para el futuro del país. |
| depender de | to depend on | Durante muchos años, España dependió del petróleo extranjero. |
| subvención | subsidy; government grant | Las subvenciones del gobierno hicieron posible el primer boom solar. |
| almacenamiento | storage | El almacenamiento de energía solar es el gran problema del sector. |
| soberanía | sovereignty | La energía solar puede dar a España más soberanía energética. |
| parque solar | solar farm | Extremadura tiene algunos de los parques solares más grandes de Europa. |
| autosuficiente | self-sufficient | El objetivo del gobierno es hacer a España autosuficiente en energía. |
| moratoria | moratorium; temporary ban | La moratoria nuclear de 1983 paró la construcción de centrales nucleares en España. |
Forty years ago, Spain imported roughly two-thirds of all its energy.
Last April, it ran entirely on renewables for a full week.
I keep turning that over in my head.
Sí, y lo más curioso es que España siempre tuvo el sol.
Yes, and the most curious thing is that Spain always had the sun.
El sol no es nuevo aquí.
The sun isn't new here.
Lo que cambió fue la decisión de usarlo.
What changed was the decision to use it.
Right, and that's what I want to dig into, because there's a real story behind why it took so long.
This isn't just a technology story.
No, no es solo tecnología.
No, it's not just technology.
Es política, es historia, es dinero.
It's politics, it's history, it's money.
España tiene un pasado complicado con la energía.
Spain has a complicated past with energy.
Durante el franquismo, el país dependía mucho del carbón y del petróleo extranjero.
During the Franco era, the country depended heavily on coal and foreign oil.
Walk me through that.
Because Franco's Spain was economically isolated for a long time, right?
The autarky period.
And then everything changed in the late fifties.
Exactamente.
Exactly.
Después de la guerra civil, España intentó ser autosuficiente, pero fue un desastre.
After the civil war, Spain tried to be self-sufficient, but it was a disaster.
Había muy poca comida, muy poca energía.
There was very little food, very little energy.
Cuando llegaron los tecnócratas del Opus Dei en los años cincuenta, abrieron el país y empezaron a construir embalses, centrales eléctricas, todo muy rápido.
When the Opus Dei technocrats arrived in the fifties, they opened up the country and started building dams, power plants, everything very quickly.
The Plan de Estabilización.
I've read about that period.
The economy grew fast, the country modernized, but the energy model they locked in was built around imports and big infrastructure.
Nobody was thinking about rooftop panels.
Claro, en los años sesenta nadie pensaba en eso.
Of course, in the sixties nobody was thinking about that.
Y después llegó la crisis del petróleo de 1973 y España sufrió mucho, porque importaba casi todo su petróleo de países árabes.
And then the oil crisis of 1973 came along and Spain suffered a lot, because it imported almost all its oil from Arab countries.
I was a kid in '73, but I remember the American side of that crisis vividly.
Gas lines, odd-even rationing.
Spain must have been hit even harder given how dependent it was.
Fue muy duro.
It was very hard.
Y además, en 1973, Franco todavía vivía.
And on top of that, in 1973, Franco was still alive.
El país estaba en transición política y económica al mismo tiempo.
The country was in political and economic transition at the same time.
Era un momento de mucha inestabilidad.
It was a moment of great instability.
Así que la energía nuclear parecía la solución.
So nuclear energy seemed like the solution.
Spain actually started building a bunch of nuclear plants in that period.
And then just...
stopped.
Sí, paró.
Yes, it stopped.
El gobierno socialista de Felipe González impuso una moratoria nuclear en 1983.
Felipe González's socialist government imposed a nuclear moratorium in 1983.
Tenían miedo, había mucha presión social después de Chernóbil.
They were afraid, there was a lot of social pressure after Chernobyl.
Entonces España quedó con unas pocas centrales nucleares y mucho carbón.
So Spain was left with a few nuclear plants and a lot of coal.
And coal meant importing, mostly.
Spanish coal production was always limited and expensive to extract.
So the dependence question never actually got solved, it just changed form.
Exacto.
Exactly.
Y mientras tanto, el sol seguía brillando todos los días en Andalucía, en Extremadura, en Murcia.
And meanwhile, the sun kept shining every day in Andalusia, in Extremadura, in Murcia.
Más de tres mil horas de sol al año en algunas zonas.
More than three thousand hours of sun a year in some areas.
Era como tener oro y no saber qué hacer con él.
It was like having gold and not knowing what to do with it.
Three thousand hours.
For context, London gets about 1,500.
Germany, which leads the world in installed solar capacity, gets about 1,600.
Spain has twice the raw material and historically installed a fraction of the panels.
Bueno, hubo un primer intento.
Well, there was a first attempt.
En 2007 y 2008, España tuvo un boom solar enorme.
In 2007 and 2008, Spain had an enormous solar boom.
El gobierno de Zapatero ofreció subvenciones muy generosas.
Zapatero's government offered very generous subsidies.
De repente, todo el mundo quería poner paneles solares.
Suddenly, everyone wanted to put up solar panels.
I remember covering some of the fallout from that.
Spain installed more solar capacity in 2008 than any country in the world.
And then it completely collapsed.
What actually happened?
Pasaron dos cosas.
Two things happened.
Primero, la crisis financiera de 2008 destruyó la economía española.
First, the 2008 financial crisis destroyed the Spanish economy.
El gobierno necesitaba dinero y las subvenciones solares eran muy caras.
The government needed money and the solar subsidies were very expensive.
Segundo, el sistema eléctrico no estaba preparado para tanta energía solar tan rápido.
Second, the electricity system wasn't prepared for so much solar energy so quickly.
And the Rajoy government came in and retroactively cut those subsidies.
Which was, by any measure, a legal and economic catastrophe for the companies that had invested based on the original terms.
Fue un desastre para la confianza de los inversores.
It was a disaster for investor confidence.
Muchas empresas fueron al tribunal internacional de arbitraje y ganaron.
Many companies went to international arbitration courts and won.
España tuvo que pagar miles de millones de euros en compensaciones.
Spain had to pay billions of euros in compensation.
Fue una vergüenza.
It was a disgrace.
So for roughly a decade, between about 2012 and 2020, Spanish solar was effectively frozen.
The whole sector just sat there.
Paralizado, sí.
Paralyzed, yes.
Y mientras España dormía, el precio de los paneles solares bajó un noventa por ciento.
And while Spain was sleeping, the price of solar panels fell by ninety percent.
Cuando España se despertó, la tecnología era diez veces más barata.
When Spain woke up, the technology was ten times cheaper.
Eso cambió todo.
That changed everything.
That's the part that genuinely gets me.
The decade of paralysis accidentally set Spain up for a much better-positioned comeback, because they missed the expensive phase entirely.
Así es.
That's right.
Y ahora España instala más energía solar que ningún otro país de Europa, proporcionalmente.
And now Spain installs more solar energy than any other country in Europe, proportionally.
En 2023, la energía solar produjo casi el veinte por ciento de toda la electricidad del país.
In 2023, solar energy produced almost twenty percent of all the country's electricity.
Hace diez años, era menos del dos por ciento.
Ten years ago, it was less than two percent.
Twenty percent in a decade, from a standing start.
The physical geography here matters a lot too.
Tell me about where these plants are actually going in.
Because it's not randomly distributed across the country.
No, no.
No, not at all.
Extremadura y Castilla-La Mancha son las regiones más importantes.
Extremadura and Castilla-La Mancha are the most important regions.
Son lugares con mucho sol, muy poca lluvia y mucha tierra barata.
They are places with lots of sun, very little rain, and a lot of cheap land.
Hay parques solares enormes, como ciudades de paneles en el campo.
There are enormous solar farms, like cities of panels in the countryside.
I've driven through Extremadura.
It's beautiful in a stark, almost lunar way.
Very sparsely populated.
And historically one of the poorest regions in Spain.
So there's a social dimension to this too.
Sí, y eso crea un debate muy interesante.
Yes, and that creates a very interesting debate.
Por un lado, los parques solares traen dinero a regiones pobres.
On one hand, solar farms bring money to poor regions.
Por otro lado, algunos agricultores y ecologistas dicen que los paneles destruyen el paisaje y quitan tierra a la agricultura.
On the other hand, some farmers and environmentalists say the panels destroy the landscape and take land away from agriculture.
The tension between green energy and green land.
I've seen that fight play out in Texas too, actually.
Wind farms across the Hill Country, ranchers furious about the sight lines, the noise, the roads cut through grazing land.
Es el mismo conflicto.
It's the same conflict.
Y en España hay otro problema: las líneas eléctricas.
And in Spain there's another problem: the power lines.
Los parques solares están en el sur, pero el consumo eléctrico está en Madrid, en Barcelona, en el norte.
The solar farms are in the south, but electricity consumption is in Madrid, in Barcelona, in the north.
Construir las líneas para transportar esa energía es difícil y caro.
Building the lines to transport that energy is difficult and expensive.
The transmission bottleneck.
That's actually the unsexy problem that's choking renewable rollouts everywhere.
You can generate all the clean power you want.
Moving it is the hard part.
Exactamente.
Exactly.
Y hay otro problema: el almacenamiento.
And there's another problem: storage.
El sol produce mucha electricidad a mediodía, pero por la noche no produce nada.
The sun produces a lot of electricity at midday, but at night it produces nothing.
España necesita baterías grandes o formas de guardar esa energía.
Spain needs large batteries or ways to store that energy.
Todavía no es suficiente.
It's still not enough.
Which is why that week of one hundred percent renewables was possible in April, when demand is moderate and the wind and hydro were also running well.
Replicating it in August, when air conditioning is running full blast and demand peaks at nine PM, is a different problem entirely.
Correcto.
Correct.
Pero hay algo importante: España también tiene mucha energía eólica e hidráulica.
But there's something important: Spain also has a lot of wind and hydroelectric energy.
La combinación de sol, viento y agua es muy poderosa.
The combination of sun, wind, and water is very powerful.
Y el gobierno está apostando mucho por el hidrógeno verde para el futuro.
And the government is betting heavily on green hydrogen for the future.
Green hydrogen.
Which is produced by using solar electricity to split water molecules.
The theory is beautiful.
The scale-up is still pretty early days.
But Spain has positioned itself as a potential exporter, not just a consumer, of that future energy.
Y eso es muy significativo históricamente.
And that is very significant historically.
Porque durante toda su historia moderna, España compró energía a otros países.
Because throughout its entire modern history, Spain bought energy from other countries.
Pagaba dinero a Arabia Saudí, a Rusia, a Argelia.
It paid money to Saudi Arabia, to Russia, to Algeria.
La idea de vender energía a Alemania o Francia es completamente nueva.
The idea of selling energy to Germany or France is completely new.
That's the part that deserves more attention than it gets in the press.
This is a geopolitical shift, not just an energy shift.
The countries that own the sun and the technology to capture it are going to have leverage that petrostates had for the last century.
Sí.
Yes.
Y el sol no se puede sancionar, no se puede cortar como un gasoducto.
And the sun can't be sanctioned, it can't be cut off like a gas pipeline.
Es una forma de energía muy democrática.
It is a very democratic form of energy.
Por eso, para España, esto no es solo economía.
That's why, for Spain, this isn't just economics.
Es soberanía.
It's sovereignty.
Hold on, I want to come back to something you said a minute ago.
You used the phrase "apostando mucho" about the hydrogen strategy.
I've heard "apostar" a lot in political coverage and I'm always slightly unsure whether it means betting, or committing, or just hoping really hard.
Buena pregunta.
Good question.
Literalmente, 'apostar' significa hacer una apuesta, como en un casino.
Literally, 'apostar' means to place a bet, like in a casino.
Pero cuando decimos 'apostar por algo', queremos decir que crees en esa cosa y pones recursos en ella.
But when we say 'apostar por something', we mean you believe in that thing and you put resources into it.
'El gobierno apuesta por el hidrógeno' significa que el gobierno cree en el hidrógeno y pone dinero ahí.
'The government apostar por hydrogen' means the government believes in hydrogen and puts money there.
So it's stronger than 'to hope for' but it still carries that sense of risk.
You're putting something on the line.
It's actually a richer word than any single English translation covers.
Exacto.
Exactly.
Puedes decir 'apostar por una persona', 'apostar por un equipo de fútbol', 'apostar por una tecnología'.
You can say 'apostar por a person', 'apostar por a football team', 'apostar por a technology'.
Siempre hay un elemento de riesgo y también de fe.
There's always an element of risk and also of faith.
Es diferente de 'intentar', que es más neutro.
It's different from 'intentar', which is more neutral.
Faith with skin in the game.
I actually think that captures the whole Spanish solar story.
After the 2008 disaster, going back and betting on the same technology took real conviction.
Anyway.
Next week we should probably talk about what happens if the storage problem doesn't get solved.
Fletcher, tú siempre terminas con el problema.
Fletcher, you always end with the problem.
Nunca con la solución.
Never the solution.
Pero sí, la próxima semana podemos hablar de eso.
But yes, next week we can talk about that.
Aunque primero necesitas practicar el verbo 'apostar'.
Although first you need to practice the verb 'apostar'.
Úsalo esta semana sin errores y te invito a una cerveza.
Use it this week without mistakes and I'll buy you a beer.