The Uncomfortable Truth About Wind Energy in the Iberian Peninsula and Its Global Impact
By Germán & Co, Karlstad, Sweden, 19 August 2025
Introduction: When Giants Return
Spain burns. Summers are now five degrees hotter than they were half a century ago (AEMET, 2025). Forests vanish in flames fueled by drought, negligence, and arson—not by wind turbines. Yet, in today’s digital echo chambers, wind power has been recast as a convenient scapegoat, accused of igniting wildfires and disfiguring landscapes.
This distortion is not trivial. What should be recognised as an industry generating $8.5 billion annually—0.7% of Spain’s GDP and supporting 40,000 jobs—is instead subjected to campaigns of mistrust. On social platforms, false claims spread with an efficiency far greater than verified facts: one viral rumour travels ten times faster than a scientific correction (NYU, 2025).
Four centuries after Don Quixote mistook windmills for giants, illusions continue to shape perception. But the reality is different: the giants of our century are tangible. They stand on Spanish hills, sweep across Mexican plains, turn in the winds of Denmark and Germany, reclaim coasts in the Netherlands, stretch across the Great Plains of the United States, spin on the shores of Brazil and Colombia, power the deserts of Chile, and catch the trade winds of the Dominican Republic. They do not menace humanity—they sustain it.
Windmills in History: From Progress to Symbol
Windmills have always stood at the intersection of imagination and material progress. The water mills of Persia in 700 B.C. increased agricultural productivity threefold. Medieval Europe’s windmills automated textile production, and the Netherlands used them in the 17th century to drain lakes and reclaim land, fuelling a commercial empire.
In literature, Cervantes transformed them into metaphors of misperception in 1605. In technology, Charles F. Brush built the first modern turbine in the U.S. in 1887. The oil shocks of the 1970s pushed Denmark to pioneer wind energy, and by the early 2000s, Spain and Mexico had adopted turbines with efficiencies reaching 45–50%.
Today, floating wind farms such as Hywind Scotland (30 MW) or the PLOCAN platform in the Canary Islands represent the new frontier. Yet in 2025, despite their demonstrable benefits, wind projects remain the subject of targeted disinformation.
Disinformation and Its Mechanisms
The campaigns directed against wind energy do not emerge spontaneously; they are the result of organised strategies.
Automated Accounts: In 2025, 30% of tweets blaming turbines for wildfires in Spain were traced to automated networks linked to vested fossil fuel interests (University of Navarra; InfluenceMap, 2025).
Media Amplification: Certain newspapers repeated unverified claims—120 articles in one year—while receiving advertising from companies tied to conventional energy (Transparency International, 2025).
Algorithmic Bias: Studies show that on major platforms, content that provokes outrage has far greater reach than material presenting verified evidence (NYU, 2025).
Ávila, 2022. A wildfire near a wind farm was quickly attributed to “sparks from turbines” by local outlets. The Civil Guard later established that it originated from an agricultural burn. Nevertheless, three years later, 60% of those surveyed in the region still believed the turbines were at fault (CIS, 2025).
Oaxaca, 2023. Wind farms were accused on social media of killing migratory birds. Research by UNAM demonstrated that the impact was minimal compared to the far greater mortality caused by buildings and domestic animals. The rumour, however, persisted.
Such cases illustrate how narratives of suspicion embed themselves in public opinion even when disproved, shaping resistance to technologies essential for climate mitigation.
Spain and Mexico: Economic Engines of Transition
Spain. The wind sector contributes $8.5 billion annually—0.7% of GDP—across 250 industrial centres, employing 40,000 people. It has reduced dependence on imported gas by saving $3 billion in 2024 alone. Companies such as Siemens Gamesa and Iberdrola export expertise worldwide, while projects like Demowfloat, with its 15 MW floating turbines, signal the country’s leadership in offshore innovation.
Mexico. The industry contributes $1.2 billion annually (0.08% of GDP) and has grown by 12% per year since 2020. In the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, 9,600 jobs and $600 million in foreign investment are tied to wind power, with firms such as ENEL, Iberdrola, and Mitsubishi active in the sector. Lower energy costs—down 15% for local industries—have already attracted global investment, including potential projects from Tesla.
The contrast with fossil sectors is stark. Spain’s coal industry accounts for 0.3% of GDP and 8,000 jobs but emits 15 million tons of CO₂ annually. Mexico’s oil industry is larger, at 2.5% of GDP and 120,000 jobs, but its volatility and 60 million tons of emissions highlight its vulnerability.
Wind, in both countries, demonstrates that energy transition is not an environmental luxury but an economic strategy.
Global Lessons: A Shared Transformation
Denmark’s wind industry contributes 3% of GDP and 33,000 jobs, emblematic of a model where industrial strategy and climate policy converge.
The German sector accounts for 0.5% of GDP—about $20 billion annually—while avoiding 70 million tons of CO₂ emissions. From 2025, Berlin aims to add 10 GW of new capacity each year.
The Netherlands, historically dependent on windmills for land reclamation, now earns $1.5 billion annually (0.2% of GDP) from offshore projects such as Gemini.
The United States harnesses vast plains: wind provides 10% of electricity nationally, generating $25 billion annually (0.1% of GDP).
In Latin America, Brazil and Colombia are expanding coastal wind generation to diversify from hydropower, while Chile already sources nearly 8% of its electricity from more than 3.5 GW of installed capacity. The Dominican Republic, with the Los Cocos complex, leads the Caribbean in reducing dependence on imported fuels.
China dominates by scale: with 30% of global installed capacity, wind represents about 0.3% of its GDP. State-led investments have reduced costs globally by 40% since 2010, though concerns over transparency and local impacts persist.
What unites these cases is the recognition that wind energy is no longer a marginal experiment but a central pillar of industrial and climate policy.
Conclusion: The Giants Are Real
The history of windmills reflects humanity’s capacity to turn imagination into infrastructure: from irrigation and textiles to land reclamation and now, climate resilience.
Yet three obstacles remain:
Disinformation, sustained and amplified by digital platforms.
Fossil interests, seeking to preserve revenue streams against a shifting energy order.
Political hesitation allows falsehoods to proliferate unchecked.
Why, then, do societies persist in blaming turbines instead of drought, negligence, or arson? Because illusions serve entrenched interests better than facts.
Cervantes’ Don Quixote mistook windmills for giants. Today, the situation is reversed: giants exist, but illusions obscure them. The difference is that these giants—from Spain to Mexico, Denmark to Germany, the Netherlands to the United States, Brazil to Colombia, Chile to the Dominican Republic, and across China’s vast fields—do not menace us. They sustain us, lighting our homes, stabilising economies, and carving a path through the climate crisis.
The task ahead is not to fear them but to recognise them, defend them, and build with them.
Key Sources: Spain: Red Eléctrica de España (REE, 2025); Asociación Empresarial Eólica (AEE, 2025); AEMET; Ministry for Ecological Transition. Mexico: Asociación Mexicana de Energía Eólica (AMDEE, 2025); Secretaría de Energía (SENER). Global: Global Wind Energy Council (GWEC, 2025); International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA); University of Navarra; New York University.
The Author
Germán Toro Ghio is among the rare commentators able to traverse the frontiers between energy, politics, and culture. With an audience of more than a quarter of a million readers worldwide, he has become a reference point in the global energy debate. As an Expert in The Energy Collective and a contributor to Energy Central’s Power Perspectives™ series, he has distinguished himself by rendering legible the often opaque interplay of markets, geopolitics, and infrastructure. His career in the sector spans more than three decades, including leadership roles such as Corporate Vice-President of Communications for AES Dominicana, where he pioneered strategies for natural gas development and regional energy integration.
Yet Toro Ghio’s path extends far beyond kilowatts and contracts. Before entering the energy sector, he navigated the realms of literature, diplomacy, and cultural policy. He served as Executive Secretary of the Forum of Culture Ministers of Latin America and the Caribbean; he co-authored Colombia en el Planeta with William Ospina and Beatriz Caballero of the La Candelaria Theater Group for the UNDP; he collaborated with the Nicaraguan poet-priest Ernesto Cardenal; and, with the encouragement of Octavio Paz, he revived Carlos Martínez Rivas’s La insurrección solitaria—restoring Central American poetry to its rightful place in the currents of twentieth-century literature.
As a writer, he has published works ranging from Nicaragua Year 5—a documentary testimony in images, catalogued by Lund University—to The Non Man’s Land and Other Tales. He has directed and overseen literary editions such as Joven arte dominicano, promoted by Casa de Teatro in Santo Domingo and distributed to universities across the world.
Chilean filmmaker and political scientist Juan Forch—an architect of Chile’s historic 1990 “NO” campaign, later dramatized in Pablo Larraín’s Oscar-nominated No—has written of Toro Ghio’s narratives that they “enrich our understanding of history beyond traditional battlefields and royal courts,” praising journeys that move effortlessly “from the discomfort of a Moscow hotel to the exhilaration of the Nicaraguan jungle.”
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