Bildu, PNV, Sumar and Podemos will bring to the Congress Plenary next Wednesday a joint non-law proposal with which they claim, after 75 years of activity, the closure of the Bardenas Shooting and Bombing Range, in Navarra, and that the Ministry of Defense nullify the lease renewal when its term ends in 2028.
The proposal, which Europa Press has accessed, also proposes that the Government repeal the declaration of the shooting range as a Zone of Preferential Interest for Defense, approved in 2000, and that it open negotiations with the Navarrese Government and the Bardenas Council to design a reconversion plan, economic stimulus and sufficient funding for the surrounding area.
In the explanatory statement, the signatory parties emphasize that the shooting range was created 75 years ago during the Franco dictatorship and that military activity has very negatively conditioned the evolution of the area, generating an "unsustainable contradiction," since the military installation is located in the heart of the Natural Park declared a Biosphere Reserve by UNESCO since 2000.
Over these seven decades, the more than 2,200 hectares of the enclosure have functioned as the main live-fire training area for the Spanish Air Force and NATO forces, including the dropping of ordnance from fighter jets.
According to the proposing groups, this activity is "frontally incompatible" with the values of peace, sustainability, and biodiversity protection "that define Navarrese society."
More than 70 accidents and environmental impact complaints
The text also records the 70 accidents registered at the range, including more than 30 that occurred outside the perimeter, with falling aircraft and projectiles in inhabited civilian areas, "compromising citizen safety."
To this record, according to Sumar, Bildu, PNV, and Podemos, is added permanent noise pollution from the daily low-altitude overflights of fighter jets breaking the sound barrier, as well as a notable environmental impact derived from the use of ammunition "that deteriorates the soil and the endemic fauna of this ecosystem." Likewise, they denounce a "severe socioeconomic limitation that mortgages the economic and labor development" of the territory and its residents.
For the signatory groups, the completion in 2028 of the current lease agreement between the Ministry of Defense and the Junta de Comunidades de Bardenas constitutes a "historic opportunity" to put an end to military activity in the polygon and articulate a future alternative through an Integral Conversion Plan.