San Esteban Municipal Government

San Esteban Municipal Government is the local institution through which Irene turns an ambitious biomass project into a governing priority, and through which the costs of that priority become visible. In the novel it is not defined by administrative rules or departments so much as by its mayor’s direct, forceful style: the government backs industrial development, seeks to reorganize forest use, and becomes entangled in disputes over property, political legitimacy, and environmental risk.

Leadership and Local Institution

The institution is introduced through Irene, whom her sister describes as a woman of action who does not stop at holding opinions: when she sees a problem, she intervenes, values results, and is willing to take shortcuts. Her family sees the same commanding instinct at home that she brings to public life. She has become mayor, and her political identity is closely bound to visible, practical leadership rather than detached administration.

Irene’s public image is itself part of the story of the government. She won an absolute majority after campaigning with a conspicuous Loewe handbag, a gift from her former husband, and promising voters that it would be the only luxury she allowed herself as mayor. The pledge became a source of cartoons and discussion on local television, even drawing disapproval from members of Izquierda Unida in Madrid before her electoral success silenced them. The episode presents a mayor who understands that local politics is conducted through symbols as well as policy, and who can turn a personal object into a memorable political promise.

The government is repeatedly encountered as a working place rather than an abstract authority. Its offices stand on the town’s central square, surrounded by stone houses with white galleries and facing the Gothic church. Bea goes there to confront Irene after learning that the chestnut timber she had assumed remained in her family’s possession has been sold. In another episode, graffiti insulting Irene appears at City Hall. The Guardia Civil has suspicions but cannot yet confirm who is responsible; Irene presses them to act, saying that the abuse has become a recurring burden on her family as well as on her public office.

The Biomass Project as Governing Priority

When Bea asks about the mayoralty, Irene reduces its immediate preoccupation to one word: biomass. The government supports the existing San Esteban Biomass Plant, which produces compressed wood pellets, and backs a much larger proposed facility beside it to generate electricity. Irene presents the plan as a means of using forest residues, producing relatively clean and inexpensive energy, creating employment, and reducing dependence on fossil fuels. She argues that forestry and energy production need not be mutually exclusive and that neglected woodland can be given another use.

The project requires more than construction. Irene describes plans to consolidate privately owned forests, use public forests, and establish short-rotation plantations harvested on a three-year cycle. She and Diego work closely to advance the electrical plant, for which outside investors are needed. Irene says the intended scale could make it the largest plant of its kind in Europe and bring 114 new jobs to the town. She has spent two years reorganizing woodland arrangements and persuading people of the project’s benefits; she expects opposition to challenge her government and says she intends to carry the plan through even if she is left isolated.

That advocacy divides the town. Irene sees the project as green development and a source of local prosperity, while opponents accuse her of betraying Cantabria by failing to defend its trees. Bea initially repeats Irene’s case that the plant uses residues and helps clean the forest. Débora, by contrast, calls it a factory built on stripping the woods and says the electrical plant will not be allowed to proceed. Their disagreement makes the government’s development policy a point of conflict within Bea’s family as well as across the community.

Forest Rights and the Family Dispute

The policy becomes concrete at the San Esteban Sawmill, where Bea and Débora encounter an industrial landscape transformed by the pellet factory and the larger construction site. An employee uses a forest map to locate them about two hundred metres north of forest track seven and tells them the surrounding timber belongs to the sawmill: usable wood will become planks, while other timber is destined for the biomass plant. He says the wood was purchased from its owners and that the purchase included the right to extract it. Bea objects that the land is private and connected to her family, but the workers insist that the timber rights have been acquired.

Bea goes to City Hall because she suspects Irene knew that their father had sold the chestnut trees and had helped bring the sale about. She finds Irene studying a map with two older men. Irene argues that the sawmill is paying the owners well and offering to buy land for short-rotation forestry. She also presents expropriation and conversion into public woodland as an alternative, warning that the municipality would not pay the owners as much as the sawmill is offering. The exchange exposes competing claims that the project’s promise of public benefit does not settle: ownership of land, ownership of timber, and the authority to decide how a forest should be used.

Irene tells Bea that she had assumed she knew the woodland was no longer theirs, while Bea says she did not. Once Bea describes the confrontation at the forest, Irene reacts not only as a sister but as a mayor whose governing programme could be damaged by scandal. She worries that a clash involving her own family will undermine the project, give the opposition an opening, and jeopardize the investment made by the Andrada family. She asks Bea to keep the incident quiet, says she will speak with the Guardia Civil and Diego, and emphasizes the jobs at stake. For Irene, the treehouse is a private project measured against what she regards as a much larger public commitment; for Bea, that argument arrives only after the family’s trees and plans have already been drawn into it.

Scrutiny, Legitimacy, and Consequences

The government’s authority is also challenged through public reporting. Pacheco shows Bea a newspaper story alleging that Irene threatened two landowners with expropriation if they did not agree to sell their trees to the biomass factory. He adds that Irene’s former husband is supplying him with information. The allegation reframes the mayor’s effort to assemble forest resources: what Irene describes as a route to a shared development project can be presented as pressure applied by public authority on behalf of a private industrial venture.

A later television interview subjects the project to a broader challenge. The presenter questions whether biomass electricity is genuinely clean, pointing to the fossil fuels used to transport forest material, the disposal of combustion residue, carbon emissions, and the quantity of woodland required to supply a large plant. She also challenges the employment and economic promises by citing other plants whose results have fallen short of expectations. Irene struggles to answer as the interview shifts from environmental performance to the political bargains needed to align the project’s many participants.

The sharpest reversal comes when the presenter displays a copy of an agreement changing pollution-control parameters. Irene says the document is false, then is shown the agreement on an iPad and says she knew nothing about the changes. The presenter frames the plant as pursuing profit at the expense of neighbors’ health and accuses a left-wing government of promoting an exploitative industry. Irene responds angrily and denies the charge, but the encounter leaves her on the defensive. San Esteban Municipal Government consequently stands at the intersection of two unresolved accounts of progress: the mayor’s promise of energy and employment, and the accumulating questions about forest use, political pressure, environmental safeguards, and who bears the risks.