Madrid Region Bans Solar Panels on Agricultural Land

Summary

The regional gov­ern­ment in Madrid has banned ground-mounted solar pan­els on 96 per­cent of avail­able land to pro­tect vine­yards and olive groves, with the remain­ing 4 per­cent care­fully vet­ted to avoid using pro­duc­tive agri­cul­tural soils. Critics argue that solar pan­els should be located in non-arable spaces, while local efforts are under­way to add value to local olive oil pro­duc­tion in the region.

The regional gov­ern­ment in Madrid has pro­hib­ited the instal­la­tion of ground-mounted solar pan­els on 96 per­cent of the autonomous community’s avail­able land to pro­tect vine­yards and olive groves.

“Vine and olive crops not only sus­tain the region’s econ­omy and land­scape, but also act as a nat­ural bar­rier against for­est fires,” said Carlos Novillo, the regional min­is­ter of envi­ron­ment, agri­cul­ture and inte­rior.

Instead, he added that the four per­cent of remain­ing avail­able land in the region had been care­fully vet­ted to pre­vent the devel­op­ment of new renew­able energy sources from using pro­duc­tive agri­cul­tural soils.

The announce­ment came dur­ing a broader speech at a work­ing break­fast, which was crit­i­cal of the national government’s five-year elec­tric­ity roadmap. 

The instal­la­tion of ground-mounted solar pan­els has become an increas­ingly con­tentious issue in Spain, which boasts about 35 gigawatts of these types of solar plants. Overall, solar energy pro­vided an esti­mated 18 per­cent of the country’s energy mix in 2024.

Critics of ground-mounted solar argue that the gov­ern­ment and devel­op­ers should focus on locat­ing them in non-arable spaces, such as deserts, rooftops and park­ing lots.

“According to a Snapshot Report, pho­to­voltaic parks now cover 1.3 mil­lion hectares of arable land glob­ally,” Juan Vilar, a con­sul­tant, told Olive Oil Times in an August 2025 inter­view. ​“That’s equiv­a­lent to the area planted with peach trees — the tenth most impor­tant per­ma­nent crop world­wide.” 

“In other words, using this fer­tile land for solar parks rather than plant­ing peach trees pre­vents the pro­duc­tion of more than 22 mil­lion met­ric tons of this fruit,” he added.

However, a 2024 study from Spain’s Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food found that only 0.2 per­cent of Spain’s fer­tile agri­cul­tural land, equiv­a­lent to less than 50,000 hectares, is cur­rently cov­ered by solar pan­els.

Incidentally, a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of this arable land is located in Andalusia, the world’s largest olive oil-pro­duc­ing region.

The ban from Madrid comes as olive farm­ers and their allies in the provinces of Jaén and Córdoba protest plans to build 25 util­ity-scale solar plants on 5,500 hectares of olive groves. 

They argue that remov­ing olive trees for renew­able energy pro­duc­tion is coun­ter­pro­duc­tive because mature olive trees play a cru­cial role in seques­ter­ing car­bon diox­ide. Others say that olive trees serve as the eco­nomic anchor of their com­mu­ni­ties in a way that solar parks can­not. 

The efforts to pro­tect olive groves in Madrid come as regional author­i­ties work to add value to local olive oil pro­duc­tion.

According to data from Spain’s Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, the region of Madrid pro­duced 4,707 met­ric tons of olive oil in the 2024/25 crop year, 0.3 per­cent of Spain’s total.

However, the con­sor­tium behind the Madrid Protected Designation of Origin (PDO) cer­ti­fi­ca­tion stated that pro­duc­tion of PDO extra vir­gin olive oil in the region more than dou­bled, ris­ing from 16,204 liters in 2023/24 to 34,000 liters. 

Overall, 13 of the region’s 30 olive mills have received the cer­ti­fi­ca­tion to pro­duce Madrid PDO olive oil, which is dom­i­nated by the Cornicabra, Castellana and Manzanilla cac­ereña olive vari­eties, along with a lesser amount of Carrasqueña, Gordal, Asperilla and Redondilla.

• Madrid Actual
• Oleorevista