Spain's biggest

Gamesa Eolica, the wind power division of the BBV bank and Iberdrola power company conglomerate, IBV, has become Spain's biggest wind power company after entering the business in 1994. The following year, Gamesa turbines -- built with Danish Vestas technology -- accounted for 3% of Spain's wind power output, but by last year the company's share of the market stood at 70%.

Gamesa Eolica, which is 40% owned by Vestas, has plans for rapid expansion in the near future and says it will be putting at least two further wind farms on line this year, both of them in Galicia. The company is also investing heavily in factories and assembly plants. One of its most immediate plans is to explore the possibility of constructing a wind turbine plant at Tarifa in the south, where wind power development first started in Spain. According to Gamesa Eolica's commercial director, Jose Maria Espinosa de los Monteros, new wind farms will be going up in Tarifa in the foreseeable future and obsolete wind turbines there will sooner or later have to be replaced.