Post by account_disabled on Mar 7, 2024 0:28:10 GMT -5
Although it may seem that I am going back too long, to understand what is happening today in the Spanish electricity sector, we must know that the main companies that now dominate it come from others that were forged during the Franco regime, a regime that did not put an end to the freedoms for the sake of ending them, but to defend the interests of the most powerful economic groups. It was then that an oligopoly was forged in which a few companies, led by the Oriol Urquijo family and with the permanent help of the government, did and undid as they pleased in the market. So much so, that the task of reforming it was a priority when democracy arrived, even for the defunct UCD. Although it was soon proven that the change of regime had not affected the power of the electricity companies and that they continued to have practically the same capacity to write in the Official State Gazette as in Franco's time. Vice President Fuentes Quintana was able to verify this when he tried to nationalize the high-voltage transportation network. Other ministers linked to the oligopoly, led by Alberto Oliart, prevented it.
Later, the most left-wing currents of the PSOE tried to carry it out, but the measures adopted by the governments of Felipe González and Zapatero were almost always those proposed by their liberal ministers or - in the best of cases - the result of a balance of forces that in the end did not allow the underlying problems to be resolved. The governments of Aznar and Rajoy did not hide Australia Phone Number their servitude and placed themselves directly at the service of the oligopoly, further encouraged by European neoliberal regulations, equally contaminated by the power of the electricity lobby. The result of this is that the Spanish electricity sector has been enjoying privileges completely unrelated to market or efficiency reasons for more than 80 years, in times of dictatorship and democracy. – When the first moratorium on the construction of new nuclear power plants was approved in 1983, compensation was granted to their owners, the oligopoly companies, which in reality was a true “bailout” with public money.
The compensation was carried out without taking into consideration the authentic costs and was a true privilege because it had been precisely those companies that had been overestimating the demand for electricity for decades to artificially inflate the business and based on debt, for the greater benefit of the banks, with whose boards of directors those of the oligopoly were intertwined. The large rescued companies did not carry out a single one of the compensations that the government proposed to them (dividend limit, financial consolidation or integration). – For years, electricity companies have charged by “power term”, a concept that was justified because it was necessary to guarantee that consumers would have the contracted power whenever they needed it. A privilege because it is not true that this supply was guaranteed, since the system would collapse with almost a third of the contracted power, and as the thousands of consumer complaints due to supply cuts have demonstrated.
Later, the most left-wing currents of the PSOE tried to carry it out, but the measures adopted by the governments of Felipe González and Zapatero were almost always those proposed by their liberal ministers or - in the best of cases - the result of a balance of forces that in the end did not allow the underlying problems to be resolved. The governments of Aznar and Rajoy did not hide Australia Phone Number their servitude and placed themselves directly at the service of the oligopoly, further encouraged by European neoliberal regulations, equally contaminated by the power of the electricity lobby. The result of this is that the Spanish electricity sector has been enjoying privileges completely unrelated to market or efficiency reasons for more than 80 years, in times of dictatorship and democracy. – When the first moratorium on the construction of new nuclear power plants was approved in 1983, compensation was granted to their owners, the oligopoly companies, which in reality was a true “bailout” with public money.
The compensation was carried out without taking into consideration the authentic costs and was a true privilege because it had been precisely those companies that had been overestimating the demand for electricity for decades to artificially inflate the business and based on debt, for the greater benefit of the banks, with whose boards of directors those of the oligopoly were intertwined. The large rescued companies did not carry out a single one of the compensations that the government proposed to them (dividend limit, financial consolidation or integration). – For years, electricity companies have charged by “power term”, a concept that was justified because it was necessary to guarantee that consumers would have the contracted power whenever they needed it. A privilege because it is not true that this supply was guaranteed, since the system would collapse with almost a third of the contracted power, and as the thousands of consumer complaints due to supply cuts have demonstrated.