🔑The key document to understand what is happening, and on which Ametller Origen relies to justify its actions in recent months.
When the Strategic Environmental Declaration (DAE)[1] of the Agroparc was approved in April 2023, it seemed that the legal framework had been established to protect the booted eagle of Gelida, an endangered species. The DAE is clear: the works could not begin without aPilot Planthat demonstrated, through GPS tracking, that the eagles could survive without the area affected by the Agroparc. However, just two months later, a document of "clarifications" issued by the Director General of Environmental Policies changed this protection framework, opening the door to the destruction we are experiencing today.
🔃A change of conditions at the request of Ametller Origen
The clarifications, signed on 8 June 2023, did not arise from an official technical review, but from a request by email from Ametller Origen and were incorporated into the file just a few days before the final approval of the modification of the POUM by the Urban Planning Commission of Penedès. This document, of which Naturalistes de Gelida were not aware until receiving the judicial file of the contentious, aims to modify substantial points of the DAE without having gone through any public exposure or citizen scrutiny.
These are the three points where the clarifications "aim to modify" what is established by environmental protection:
- Industrial works are dissociated from the Pilot Plan. While the DAE subordinates "the earth movements and the construction of the Agroparc Project" to the success of the Pilot Plan, the Director General "clarifies" in his document that this condition only applied to the construction of greenhouses larger than 3 hectares. This clears the way for the works of the industrial warehouses, the roadworks and the massive earth movements at Can Joncoses to begin immediately, despite being located in the middle of the hunting area (Kernel 50%) of the eagles.
- The redefinition of the "red path". The DAE is categorical: "no action can be taken on the path marked with a red line" (the Talaia path) until the safety of the species is verified. The clarification, however, introduced the possibility of carrying out "arrangement and maintenance actions". And the company has gone even further. Under this supposed label of "maintenance", what has ultimately been allowed is the destruction of a section of the path, with a deep excavation that has completely nullified the functionality of the road and has uprooted the adjacent woodland, according to what theecologists reported this December 2025.
- From precaution to a fait accompli. This reinterpretation by the Director General emptied the precautionary principle of its content that governs the DAE. By allowing the bulk of the urbanisation to proceed without waiting for the scientific results of GPS tracking, the Director General facilitated a policy of facts accomplished. Indubio pro natura: when there is doubt about whether an interpretation may cause environmental harm, the least harmful option for nature must be chosen; that is, the most protective interpretation must prevail.
🆘The consequences: A "critical and irreversible" impact
The result of this "backdoor" modification is now very tangible. The most recent reports from the Service of Fauna and Flora from October 2025 confirm that the works carried out under these clarifications have not met the requirements stipulated by the Service's technicians and already represent a critical and irreversible impact on the pair of eagles.
As warned by a magistrate of the TSJC (Highcourt Justice) in her dissenting vote, allowing works without the environmental guarantees of the DAE could mean the "consummation of the extinction of the eagles". From StopAgroparc we will continue to denounce that an unpublished document of clarifications can never take precedence over an Environmental Strategic Declaration or the duty to protect our most threatened natural heritage.
[1] The DAE is a mandatory, essential, and binding administrative act, prior to the approval of the modification of the POUM, which is prepared as a result of the Strategic Environmental Assessment process. It includes all the conclusions of the assessment, the conditions, and the preventive, corrective, and compensatory measures that must be incorporated mandatorily.
Images of the path of the Talaia marked in red in the DAE:
Talaia path on November 11, 2025, a few weeks before the destruction:
