- Not making things easier, she says, “means choosing for that opportunity to go elsewhere. And Galicia cannot afford that”
- She highlights the importance of guaranteeing “accessible, stable energy and sufficient infrastructure” because, otherwise, “there can be no industry”
- “Industrial denialism from certain organisations is just as bad as shallow criticism, with no basis, invented or ill-informed, that fails to recognise the progress achieved, perhaps through ignorance, perhaps through lack of knowledge,” she stresses
- “What we lack are not resources; what we lack is collective ambition, believing that we can play in the top league, stop watching as others take positions and start taking our own,” she says
A Coruña, 27 May 2026
The minister for Economy and Industry, María Jesús Lorenzana, today highlighted the need to reduce processing times and bureaucracy in the administration because “investments do not wait; they compete between territories.” “Not making it easier means choosing for that opportunity to go elsewhere. And Galicia cannot afford that,” she stated.
At a business breakfast organised by the Confederation of Businesses of A Coruña (CEC), Lorenzana insisted that the current context demands “speed, capacity to attract investments and administrations that are not an obstacle,” she said, calling for the need to know how to “create conditions, provide support, offer certainty and reduce times.” “We must understand that, when a company decides to invest, time is not an administrative detail; it is a strategic variable,” she added.
She thus highlighted the importance of guaranteeing “accessible, stable energy and sufficient infrastructure” because, otherwise, “there can be no industry.” At present, she continued, “Spain is not prepared to meet the needs of the very large group of industrial projects that are super‑consumers of energy and are seeking to install themselves in our territory –she said–. And what is worse, the transmission network is not capable of evacuating all the energy that we will be able to produce with renewables.”
In this regard, she noted that Galicia is well positioned, but censured that, in the current context, the energy transition is becoming a dogma. “Europe cannot win the battle against climate change by losing its industrial base –she said–. And Galicia cannot accept a transition model that leaves it out of the game.”
Also on energy, she pointed out that Galicia has 18 of the 34 critical raw materials that the European Union has identified as priorities, and has just presented a mining plan that represents the unlocking of around 7 billion euros in natural resources. “If anything stops these projects, it will not be a lack of environmental rigour on the part of the Xunta nor a lack of the best available techniques on the part of promoters, but rather misinformation or incorrect information to the public.” In this context, she stressed the need to make known, among other things, that projects will have to pass on part of their benefits to the local population, because otherwise, “they will not go ahead,” she assured. “That is the only way to fight against that ideological current embedded in parties and organisations.”
Among other conditions that administrations must guarantee to attract investments, she referred to industrial land that is “quick, accessible and flexible in terms of acquisition conditions.” As she specified, at present the Xunta has 12 million square metres of public business land in various stages of processing, with a view to 2030, with an investment of 440 million euros; 4 million in the province of A Coruña. “This is more than the total developed by Xestur since the 1980s, when it was created,” she highlighted.
Lorenzana concluded by stressing, finally, the importance of providing support to companies that want to invest; something that the Xunta does through the Galicia Economic Office. In this context, she indicated that the regional administration already has 15 Strategic Industrial Projects (PIE) in processing (12 in the province of A Coruña), in areas such as green hydrogen, decarbonisation, the circular economy, data centres, the automotive sector and defence. Almost 1.5 billion euros of potential investment and more than 1,400 direct jobs.
“Industrial denialism from certain organisations is just as bad as shallow criticism, with no basis, invented or ill‑informed, that fails to recognise the progress achieved, perhaps through ignorance, perhaps through lack of knowledge,” she asserted. “What we lack are not resources; what we lack is collective ambition, believing that we can play in the top league, stop watching as others take positions and start taking our own,” she said.
