The Queen supports the ‘Alliance for Wool’, a project to recover the industry as a “means of living and material for the future”

The Queen Letizia attended this Wednesday the presentation ceremony of the ‘Alliance for Wool’a multidisciplinary initiative that brings together more than 450 professionals, companies and institutions to claim its cultural and economic value not only as a tradition, but as “livelihood and future material“.

The event, held at the Institución Libre de Enseñanza within the framework of the Madrid Design Festival, represents the consolidation of this project to which the Queen – who attended in a fine merino wool suit from the Oteyza brand – already showed her support last April when she received its promoters at the Royal Court.

The Alliance arises with the conviction that design is a tangential discipline with the capacity to promote the recovery of the wool industry, a key material in the sociocultural history of Spain and with a great capacity to structure the territory.

“Spain has gone from having more than 20 million sheep in the 1980s to 13.7 million in 2023, a reduction that has directly impacted wool production and the progressive loss of the industrial fabric linked to the sector, denounces the Alliance.

The platform aims to connect the primary sector with contemporary industry. Ranchers, shepherds, designers and big brands work together to return wool to its strategic role in the structuring of the territory and the rural economy.

“In recent months we have developed a continuous exercise of meetings, interviews and conversations with key institutions and agents. We have been able to dialogue with different government organizations, with large companies in the textile sector of our country, with professionals from different fields of design and fashion, and with heads of leading institutions and brands. This process has allowed us to incorporate new approaches, detect real opportunities, challenges and specific possibilities of each sector involved.“said the director of the Alliance, Álvaro Matías.

‘METAMORPHOSIS’

During the presentation, ‘Metamorphosis’ was announced, the first practical action of the Alliance, an action that will try to regenerate the landscape from the figure of the sheep. Specifically, this pilot project will monitor six flocks with more than 1,400 sheep in different parts of Spain to demonstrate with verifiable data that extensive grazing is profitable and sustainable.

The initiative includes geolocation systems and complete traceability from shearing to the final product, with the ultimate goal of increasing the livestock herd and preventing natural disasters such as fires.

The event featured representative voices from the entire value chain, such as extensive livestock farmer Nélida Roiz; the director of Public Policy Spain & Portugal at Amazon, Christoph Steck; the president of the Adolfo Domínguez Foundation, Adriana Domínguez; and the veterinarian Félix Oliver Avilés. Currently, the Alliance’s practices already extend to ten autonomous communities, seeking to consolidate a network that articulates the entire national territory.