The official version was that it was unfeasible and that the €60 million investment backed by a Spanish patent would not go ahead. The Las Palmas Port Authority shut the door on Nueva Pescanova’s investment, but the plan is moving forward—and in Galicia. It is being led by Profand, the owner of Unión Martín.
€60 million
AnimaNaturalis, according to La del Pulpo, the platform opposed to keeping cephalopods in captivity and one of the organizations that has actively campaigned against the Las Palmas project, has warned that “the outcome in the Canary Islands does not close the door on intensive octopus farming in Spain.” Even before the Port of Las Palmas said goodbye to Pescanova’s plan, “since January 2025, with an authorization—renewable for ten-year periods,” there had been the green light “to install an experimental common octopus hatchery on A Borna beach, in Moaña (Pontevedra).” The project, developed in collaboration with the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC), “has the stated objective of scaling up to industrial production within five years,” AnimaNaturalis warns.
Organizations such as AnimaNaturalis and PACMA maintain that the project’s own documentation acknowledges larval mortality rates of between 50% and 80%, as well as its proximity—less than one kilometer—to the Ensenada de San Simón Special Area of Conservation. PACMA has announced that it is considering challenging the authorization through administrative and judicial proceedings. For these organizations, this reflects what they have been pointing out for months: without a law to prevent it, new projects of this kind could be developed.
The environmental front moves to Galicia
In recent months, a bill proposing an explicit ban on intensive octopus farming in Spain has gained momentum in the Congress of Deputies. The initiative seeks to amend Law 23/1984 on Marine Farming to prevent the authorization of commercial operations dedicated to this species, relying on the precautionary principle and on scientific research published over the past decade concerning octopuses’ intelligence, sentience and behavior.
The proposal, promoted with the backing of the INTERCIDS association of legal experts and registered by several parliamentary groups, was admitted for consideration and must now continue through the parliamentary process. For the organizations behind it, the shelving of the Gran Canaria project does not eliminate the possibility that other companies will submit similar initiatives, which is why they consider a nationwide legal ban necessary—a possibility that, they point out, another project is already demonstrating on the ground. Pescanova’s (Abanca’s) withdrawal of the Las Palmas project brought to an end an initiative that had been closely watched for years by researchers, companies and organizations around the world. Had it been built, it would have been the first facility intended to produce octopus on a large scale for human consumption.
The article “The owners of Unión Martín to build an octopus farm … in Galicia” was first published on canarymaritime.com.
