Flix wants to recover the riu de dalt, as the residents know it, a century later. With a privileged location, nestled in a meander of great environmental value, the flixancos have always boasted that the Ebro passes through their town twice. But next to the reservoir, with its right bank occupied for more than a century by the chemical industry, the landscape of the Ebro has been that of a captive river and confined for fifteen decades by a double barrier of 2,000 steel plates.
The cranes and operators of the public company Tragsa have removed the last pieces of iron anchored in the reservoir this week. The image is an absolute novelty for a whole generation of flixanks, born in the 21st century: they had always seen it occupied by the kilometer-long steel barrier.
With the removal of the insulation system, the long and tortuous process of extracting the 700,000 tons of toxic sludge dumped into the river by the chemical industry for a hundred years is closed.
“It is a turning point, a before and after, we are closing a period in the history of Flix. An industrial town, with more than 120 years of chemical history”, explains the writer Andreu Carranza, a neighbor of Flix, although he was born in Ascó.
Almost parallel to the decontamination, there has been a process of deindustrialization in Flix and depopulation. With now just over 3,400 residents – in the 1990s there were more than 5,000 – chemistry employed the majority of the population directly or indirectly for decades. On December 31, the closure of the Factory was completed, as the residents of the main company that has operated in the town, next to the river, since 1896 have known. Ercros has left nine employees on maintenance and dismantling tasks.
“Flix was an oasis, a rich town, people worked the land and had the Factory. The people have to undertake new paths and new challenges”, adds Carranza. Chemistry wages turned into manna. Many of the families sent their children to study abroad, now an added problem for the future of the new Flix.
Without the dependence on chemical monoculture and with the closure of the two nuclear reactors in neighboring Ascó on the horizon, Flix, like the entire Ribera d’Ebre, has been looking for a way to reinvent itself for years.
The cleaning of the swamp, in one of the largest decontamination episodes in Europe, opens up new opportunities. The City Council is working on an ambitious project to take advantage of the free space to first create a large neighborhood access to the Flix reservoir from the town, which does not exist. With the conservation of the pier that has been used to extract the sludge, it has become a competition regatta course. The plan, advanced on Friday by the ACN news agency, is in an initial phase of preparation, as explained to this newspaper by its mayor, Francesc Barbero (ERC).
“We are still in the definition phase, there have been meetings and visits on the river with the Catalan Rowing Federation and the Club Nàutic de Flix and we have an engineer working on the project to use the pier”, the mayor explains. The Institute for the Development of the Ebrenque Regions (Edece) also participates.
The plan is seen as a revulsion for the entire region at a sports and tourist level. To the same end, they are also working on the reopening of the reservoir lock, in disuse and competition from the hydroelectric plant, and on the plant’s navigation tunnel, adds Barbero. For now the mayor does not venture to set any calendar.
“The swamp is a great tourist asset. And if it could be fixed after decades of lawsuits, the Flix lock would allow the Ebro river to be made navigable from the sea to Riba-roja d’Ebre”, highlights Raül Sabaté (Rogles Aventura). “As a regatta course, with three kilometers in a straight line, it would be impressive; international competitions could be held”.
The navigable section of the Catalan Ebro, between Ascó and Amposta, recorded the passage of 10,000 boats and nearly 15,000 canoes in 2022, the best tourist attraction. With a new navigable stretch of 15 kilometres, in Flix the opportunity to use larger draft vessels would open up, as in Ascó or Benifallet.
