In 2019, the village of Sambuca di Sicilia went viral for selling houses for one euro, highlighting a growing issue: rural depopulation and the decline of villages. Galicia is no exception to this phenomenon. Silvia Blanco Dosil had every chance of being one of those people who leave their place of origin in search of job opportunities. After all, she was born in Seilán, a Galician parish of barely fifteen houses.
However, she managed to stay in her homeland, pursue her passion, and advance in a field—engineering—where female representation remains scarce. Silvia talks to us from the Bonus Coruña wind farm in the town of Mazaricos, in the Northwest region of Galicia in Spain, which she currently supervises, and explains the path she has followed in these seventeen years at ACCIONA.
Reach high without going too far
Silvia says that some days she rides her bike up Mount Iroite, near her home. “You start to climb and you see the sea, from this side the entire Arousa estuary, and you get to the top, and there is an unparalleled peace. You arrive and you find the estuary of Muros and Noia in the background; you are in the middle of the mountain, and you see the horses grazing and you just hear that, and you stop there and say: wow, I could die peacefully feeling this.” She jokingly calls the climbs up Mount Iroite “Iroitherapy.” It is there where she escapes the daily hustle and bustle and reconnects with the landscapes of her childhood.
Today she no longer practices mountain biking competitively, as she did years ago when she won some regional races, but this hobby is still a haven of freedom for her. This sport also has something symbolic about it: crowning mountain passes on pedals is quite similar to the path she has followed in her professional and personal development. It is fair to say that Silvia has reached the top without having to go very far.
A childhood among dogs, cats, and crabs
“We look at the world only once, in childhood. The rest is memory,” said the Nobel Prize winner Louise Glück. And it is impossible to escape that impression when you hear Silvia talk about her early childhood in the meadows of her native land. Her face lights up when she does so. “I was lucky to live at a time and in a place where you could be free. It was homework and until it got dark and you heard your mother’s cry of ‘it’s time to go back,’ you were out there,” she tells us.
In the fields near her home ran the Tambre River, the scene of much of her childhood leisure: “It was a river entrance where people had their boat anchored and little else, but it was great fun to go swimming in summer and catch crabs. We would stick our hands in the holes to catch them, and they would come out hooked, which hurt, but we loved it, and we would go home with them.” Silvia also crafted her own fishing rods with a stick and some fishing line, perhaps an early sign of her vocation as an engineer.
And of course, in that childhood linked to nature, contact with animals was also inevitable: “I had many at home: cats, dogs, and at some point, it was almost like a shelter because I rescued any animal that seemed abandoned.”
From that distant time, she also remembers playing with the tools in her father’s small workshop, who was a bricklayer, and working as an assistant with her two sisters to help him. Both parents worked tirelessly to raise the family. He did so from the age of fourteen, while she assumed the tasks within her reach in the area, from shellfishing to working in the fish factories, since she was unable to complete her studies. “As she always says, that’s what makes her sad: not having been able to go to school anymore because she liked it,” Silvia notes.
“My mother had a harder time with me for dedicating too much time to my studies than for being lazy.”
Perhaps it was from them that she also learned tenacity in her studies and later in her professional life, sometimes to an excessive degree. “My mother had a harder time with me for dedicating too much time to my studies than for being lazy. Imagine, at night she would come to tell me about five times: ‘Go to bed, you’re not learning anything else.’”
From the meadows to traffic jams
We are not always good at what we like, and vice versa. This was the case for our interviewee when she had to choose a direction for her studies, as she was better at humanities than sciences. After attending high school in a nearby town, Noia, she had to decide on a career. Her sister, who had always been “a role model” for her, was studying Quantity Surveying in La Coruña. Silvia thought it would be best to study Civil Engineering, allowing her to live in the same city and stay closer to home.
“After living in a house in the countryside, moving to study in Vigo was quite a radical change as it is an industrial city with a lot of cars and a lot of traffic.”
In the end, however, she chose Mechanical Engineering, which appealed to her more, but that forced her to study in Vigo. “It was quite a radical change,” she explains. “It’s an industrial city, there’s a lot of cars, a lot of traffic; moving into an apartment when you’re used to living in a house in the country… it changed me.” The meadows of her childhood were momentarily left behind. But every weekend she returned to her parents’ house without fail.
The connection between renewable energies and nature
Considering her attachment to the earth, nature, and animals, it is not surprising that Silvia turned to renewable energies. In fact, her final year project focused on photovoltaic energy. “I really like everything environmental and sustainable […] everything that respects nature and takes care of it. So, renewable energies always caught my attention, it seemed to me something very necessary.”
Thus, the final thesis, which she completed in 2007, combined renewable energy with another dimension of sustainability: the recycling of solar panels. “I thought it was interesting because it was also something that was just starting at the time,” she says. In the end, although she received a good grade, she didn’t present it publicly because she had “stage fright,” something she has been taming over time, along with other fears.
The excitement of the first day on the job
Silvia had not yet finished her final year project when she started knocking on doors to enter the working world. “I was really eager to start working and become independent, but my mother would say to me, ‘What’s the rush?’” A daughter who studied too much and wanted to move out right after finishing her degree! But that’s how it was, even though it meant starting with her first job.
“I signed up for everything there was and sent résumés to all the companies and all the offers I saw in the pink pages of the newspaper,” she says. Then, one day, she read an offer on a job portal for a position as a preventive maintenance technician at the wind farms in Mazaricos, very close to her home village. As we have seen, Silvia was very attached to her geographical and family roots, so this seemed like a great opportunity, even though it was only a two-month contract.
“When the wind farm boom began, the priority was to hire people from the area. That’s why they hired me, among other reasons, because I lived nearby.”
It was not only a job opportunity in a nearby place, but in a new booming sector that was revitalizing the region with a positive local impact: “When the parks started, this was at the beginning, during the boom when there was so much aid, the priority was that people should be from the area. That’s why they hired me out of all those who applied; one of the reasons was because I was from nearby.”
The predictive maintenance position she had been assigned consisted of taking vibration measurements of the wind turbines, performing internal inspections of rotating components, and other actions aimed at detecting potential failures.
“The first day, I didn’t even wear company clothes. I was wearing jeans and a sweater that the trainer teaching the access course had given me. It felt like the first day of high school—exciting but nerve-wracking—and I loved it. I enjoyed it very much. For the first few months, I was on cloud nine. At home, they told me I was insufferable because I kept saying it was the best job in the world,” she recalls with a smile.
“For the first few months, I was on cloud nine. At home, they told me I was insufferable because I kept saying it was the best job in the world.”
That first job, at that time as part of a subsidiary, would be the beginning of a career developed entirely at ACCIONA: “I hadn’t even been there two months when the manager I had at the time told me that they were going to make me permanent because they were happy with my work. He said I was going to have continuity in the position, and that was a great joy for me,” she explains.
This hiring process leads her to reflect on the impact of ACCIONA Energía’s arrival in her region. “You have to understand that at the time the jobs it offered in the wind farms, like the one I have now, would not be offered by any other company. Most of those people had no studies or specialized training and they got a job right next to their home. Today they are there, trained and with a good job situation.”
A tour of Spain’s wind farms
Andalusia, Catalonia, Asturias… Despite her attachment to her homeland, Silvia did have to spend some time inspecting different wind farms throughout Spain on numerous trips. It was difficult work, either because of bad weather or because it was necessary to climb to the top of many wind turbines without an elevator for support. Despite the safety measures, she faced the risks inherent in physical work.
From that time, she remembers learning from numerous colleagues. “You met people who knew a lot, who taught you a lot of things and different ways of thinking.” She adds: “You also see how they work in other places, the types of machines, and in the end, you get to know all the technologies, which is also something valuable. There were better times and worse times, but my colleagues were very good.”
cosas, y distintas formas de pensar”. Y añade: “También ves cómo trabajan en otros sitios, los tipos de máquinas, que al final conoces todas las tecnologías, que también es algo valioso. Había momentos mejores y otros peores, pero los compañeros eran muy buenos”.
In general, although there were few female engineers in the program, Silvia did not notice any discrimination at work because she was a woman, apart from a few details. “I think the reception was very good, but you also encounter certain comments. In general, we are used to hearing ‘No, you don’t take that, I’ll do that, you don’t have the strength,’ and in the end, you end up believing it.”
Climbing new peaks
Eventually, around 2015, Silvia ended up heading the predictive maintenance department, from where she supervised work at ACCIONA Energy’s wind farms throughout Spain, and some abroad, such as Poland and Chile. Our interviewee explains that the process of taking on responsibilities was gradual and natural: “I liked to organize myself at work when you went around. We became a group of twelve people and, of course, we worked in pairs, but somehow, we had to organize the tasks and talk to the people in charge of the parks. And I took on that task.” She also used her writing skills to write reports.
Sometimes in this section, we come across people who have a very well-defined career plan, with very clear goals. In Silvia’s case, she limited herself to working with tenacity and being present when an opportunity arose, often with some apprehension: “They asked me if I was interested in applying and passing the process for park manager and, well, I applied, but I didn’t have it all my own way. I was a little afraid and I thought: ‘There will be things in which I will be very lame or not up to the task.’” She doesn’t put it in those terms, but perhaps it could be described as imposter syndrome.
Fortunately, she did not listen to those inner voices and, after consulting with her family, who encouraged her to take the step, she managed to overcome all the phases of the hiring process. In 2020 she became head of the five wind farms that make up the Bonus Coruña park, in the town of Mazaricos, a stone’s throw from her family.
“In a talk I gave at a high school on Women’s Day, I told the girls, ‘There are no limits. You set the limits.’”
In that transition, she was fortunate to learn something about the fears and limitations that had assailed her: “Years ago, and it coincided when I made the change [to the new position], I was invited to go to a high school to give a talk with other girls for Women’s Day. And the girls’ questions were, ‘And aren’t you afraid of that?’ Being there was like they saw it too far away. Like they lacked someone to tell them that they didn’t have a limitation. And I told them: ‘There are no limits. You set the limits.’” And she concludes: “Obviously, you have to like it, but you have to know that there is that possibility. I think that sometimes we limit ourselves.”
And what has been the evolution of female representation within ACCIONA? “I think that in this company, the issue of equality is progressing quite well because opportunities are opening up. For example, the position I’m in now was unthinkable years ago because it wasn’t even considered.” She also mentions ACCIONA’s female leadership acceleration program in which she successfully participated a few years ago.
“My job is complex because every day, after four years, I’m still learning new things, new ways of doing things that I didn’t know until now.”
Silvia describes this new position as a learning challenge: “It is complex because every day, after four years, I am still learning new things. I realize that I must do them in a way that I didn’t know before. I think it’s not just me, I see that it happens to more people because there are many things you must be aware of. In the end, it’s also, to a large extent, a management job rather than working with the machines.”
But many times, it is also about technical problems: “Suddenly, a line in a fleet of fifteen machines stops because a transformer has tripped, and you have to wait until you can change it. Then you have a blade that needs to be lowered somewhere else and another machine that has stopped somewhere else…” She also points out that she has learned to take these small crises more calmly: “In the end, your head stops you and tells you: well, relax, this is not the end of the world.”
I have it all here
Today, after almost twenty years at ACCIONA, Silvia has the perspective to reflect on her career. Of all she has learned, but also of the conquest it has meant: “I came from a very humble family where my parents had to endure a lot of work and hardship to get ahead, not just for me, but also for my two sisters. When I talk to my mother and notice her pride, I tell her: ‘Of course, if I have achieved something great, it is thanks to you […]’. Without them, I wouldn’t be who I am.”
“I can say that the wind farms I work on are the most beautiful in the world.”
That gratitude also helps her to put things in perspective amidst the daily stress of her great responsibilities: “When I have a problem, I stop and tell myself: hey, you’re lucky, not everyone gets there no matter how hard they try, not everyone is where they want to be and where they would like to be, and I can say that I practically have it all.”
“I always say it: the wind farms where I am right now were my all-time favorites and I still say they are the most beautiful in the world. Besides, here you have the sea and the mountains, not all places offer something like that. There are no better views than in this place,” she explains before returning to her daily work in those same mountains that were the outline of her childhood.
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