Almost thirty projects are fighting in Spain to start new mining activities to obtain the metals necessary for supplies related to the energy and digital transition. However, this is not being a bed of roses for the promoters. But many of these initiatives are encountering strong social resistance due to the environmental impacts of the projects.
The latest and most intense conflict is the one in Cáceres, where the Australian company Infinity Lithium and its subsidiary Extremadura New Energies are promoting a plan to extract lithium in the old San José de Valdeflores tin mine, about 800 meters from the urban area of ??Cáceres. The initial project, an open-air exploitation, was rejected by the Government of Extremadura, since the urban planning plan of Cácerse prohibits mining extraction less than 2 kilometers from the historic center. But the promoting company has rearmed its arguments and is promoting, as an alternative, an underground gallery mine, convinced that it will be able to overcome the obstacles that arose in the first attempt.
Spain is currently experiencing a great boom in initiatives for metal mining extraction, driven above all by foreign companies.
Many of these exploration and research works are also driven by small ‘junior’ companies that are making investments largely focused on old mines that ceased activity when the work stopped being profitable, while now profitability expectations have improved.
“The enormous increase in the consumption of key metals, such as copper, aluminum and, of course, critical materials for Europe means that market prices are rising; and they will continue to rise more. All of this makes interest grow, especially in the areas that were already in exploitation and where there was a stoppage of extraction,” confirms Vicente Gutiérrez Peinador, president of the National Confederation of Mining and Metallurgy Entrepreneurs (Confedem). ).
In Spain, 28 projects have been compiled in different stages of processing to carry out mining activities focused on obtaining metals for the energy transition (especially lithium, nickel, tungsten, palladium, platinum…) including critical metals (a list of thirty materials that are updated every two years by the European Commission). In addition, there are 11 mines in exploitation of critical materials, and another 90 more projects are in the exploration phase (for a total of 129).
The projects promoted in Spain could help to partially compensate for the metal deficit that hinders Europe from obtaining the metals associated with the energy transition.
Spain is the third community country in terms of mineral resources in Europe, after Sweden and Finland, although it remains to be seen if all of this is really converted into exploitable reserves since there are many requirements to convert them into industrial resources.
In fact, many of these projects are systematically colliding with opposition from citizen or environmental organizations. And many do not pass the environmental evaluation.
“The first problem is urban planning, although it is usually solved. The main obstacle is the environmental impact statements, because complaints are collected in the process. Every project runs into a platform of 40 unwilling people. That causes a lot of noise and that doesn’t cause the projects to be paralyzed, but rather it ends up slowing down a lot of the projects,” says Gutiérrez Peinador.
In the case of the lithium mine in Cáceres, the project has come up against the platform Save the Mountain of Cáceres, whose allegations highlighted the existence of a protected forest as well as the proximity of the exploitation to the urban area. Their considerations were attended to, and the Extremadura Government shot down the first project. And now the company, to overcome the opposition, has announced that its plan is modified to build an underground mine, for which it promises to use only renewable energy in its processes as well as wastewater from the treatment plant (so as not to detract from the supply of resources). “It will be one of the greenest and most ecological projects. In taxes alone, the Extremadura Government will receive between 80 and 100 million annually,” says Ramón Jiménez Serrano, CEO of Extremadura New Energies. The attached plant will make it possible to obtain lithium hydroxide, a raw material that is sold to manufacture batteries to store electrical energy (electric cars, mobile phones and renewable energies).
“They try to present it as an industrial project to gain followers in the face of the scarce industry in Extremadura, but it is only a mine, with its waste dumps, its sludge ponds and its chemical treatment plant… No matter how much they twist the legality, due to the level of pollution and consumption of resources, this is not compatible with a city next door,” says Eduardo Mostazo, spokesperson for the Save the Mountain platform in Cáceres.
Other projects have been put on the shelf. This is the case of the Matamulas rare earth deposit in the municipalities of Torrenueva and Torre de Juan Abad (Ciudad Real). There, the Quantum company intends to extract monazite with relevant quantities of praseodymium and neodymium, which are used in the manufacture of magnets for electronic cars and wind turbines.
However, the exploitation permit was denied by the Junta de Castilla la Mancha due to the potential impacts on biodiversity with a decision that was confirmed in 2021 by the Superior Court of Justice. The ruling argues that the project could lead to “the fragmentation of the ecological connectivity” of the cores of special protection zones for birds and other fauna.
One of the characteristics that are repeated in these new mining projects is that they frequently correspond to old exploitations that had been abandoned and that, over the years, are once again the object of interest due to the favorable evolution of market prices.
Lithium was sold 8 years ago at 1,000 euros per ton; It has reached a price of 80,000 euros per ton in 2023 and now 40,000 are sold. “The price has multiplied enormously. This means that the cost of extracting it is offset even if it is extracted through underground galleries, which is more expensive; That’s why he didn’t propose before, says Ramón Jiménez.
The reopening of mines often occurs without the old abandoned mines having addressed restoration, according to complaints.
“The reason is obvious; Companies seek to make money and, obviously, by restoring they do not make money; “Where they make money is by selling the mineral,” explains Joám Evans, from Ecologistas en Acción, who has created a map where he collects many of these conflicts called the Iberian Mining Observatory. x
Many times projects have been dormant or hibernating and suddenly wake up, so that the old impacts appear like a wound in the territory to heal.
A repeated complaint from environmental groups is that the projects do not have adequate coverage with bonds to guarantee adequate restoration.
Restoration would cost millions of euros in many cases and yet restoration guarantees are backed, says Evans, which means the costs to regenerate the affected areas cannot be covered, says Evans.
On the other hand, Vicente Gutiérrez disagrees with the bail being small. “These bonds have been increasing; today they are many millions of euros.” His argument is that any mining project involves placing a bank guarantee for the final value of what the rehabilitation costs when the project is finished.
Other times conflicts are due to metal mining projects from the 1980s gaining momentum based on rights that should have expired but are still alive or can be updated. They are mines that should have been closed years ago and that, however, are “reborn,” according to the Iberian Mining Observatory.
A paradigmatic example is that of the San Finx mine, in the municipality of Lousame (A Coruña), which mainly extracted tin and tungsten, and whose greatest activity occurred during the Second World War. The mine was reopened in 2009 after a new exploitation project and a restoration plan were approved, but were not subject to an environmental impact assessment.
Environmental groups have reported contamination by heavy metals from mine drainage and waste dumps on the adjacent river and the Muros-Noia estuary (in Red Natura 2000), located just 7 km downstream, a very important shellfishing area that provides sustenance to more than 1,500 families. The concentrations of cadmium, copper and zinc exceed the permitted limits.
There have also been cases in which the project (for various reasons) has not been subjected to environmental evaluation, which represents an exclusion of citizen participation.
This was the case, for example, of the Alberta 1 lithium mine in Beariz, on the border of Ourense with the province of Pontevedra, where the construction project of a new lithium mine was presented without undergoing this environmental examination.
The NGOs and local communities accused the acting officials of corruption for allowing the procedure to continue without that requirement until, faced with the possibility of legal action, the Galician government decided to archive the procedure using as an excuse a negative report from the Miño Hydrographic Confederation. -Sil.
There have also been cases where initiatives fail to prosper because they do not pass the environmental examination. This has happened with the Salave mine, in Tapia de Casariego (Asturias), where the largest unexploited gold deposit in Europe is located, excluding Russia; although its promoters do not give up with new attempts.
The Principality of Asturias agreed in 2014 to issue a negative environmental impact statement for the mining project of this Salave gold deposit. The decision was adopted due to “unfavorable reports from the Cantabrian Hydrographic Confederation (CHC)” in which it was concluded that the environmental impact study presented by the promoters (Exploraciones Mineras del Cantábrico, EMC) was “insufficient” in judging that There was no characterization of the discharges and waste that was going to be generated. Likewise, it indicated that the deposit of sludge from the mine could seriously affect the public hydraulic domain, the quality of the water and the ecosystems associated with the Muria River.
Another controversial project is the Corcoesto gold mining concessions (Cabana de Bergantiños, province of La Coruña), which the project was resumed in 2011. The proposed plan involved the impact of some 700 hectares through several cuttings open sky, two ponds with 11 million cubic meters of toxic sludge and waste dumps with 89 million cubic meters of waste. To obtain 30 tons of gold, the use of 546 tons of cyanide, 798 tons of caustic soda and 357 tons of hydrochloric acid per year would be required. However, in March 2014 the Xunta de Galicia denied approval of the exploitation project on the basis that the mining company had not proven its economic and technical solvency, a decision that is confirmed by the Superior Court of Justice of Galicia.
Europe is now enormously deficient in this type of metals necessary for the energy transition. For this reason, in 2008, the EU saw this risk and launched the so-called “Raw Materials Initiative” to guarantee supply, while in 2023 it has managed to pass a law (regulation) so that in 2030 at least 10% comes from raw materials. of Europe (now it is less than 5%). Metals such as lithium, nickel, silicon, magnesium, palladium and other elements classified as “strategic” are essential to manufacture almost any technological product, from mobile phones to solar panels or electric cars.
And many are critical metals, which depends on the availability of this material at European borders or on foreign supply guarantees, which in turn is related to the stability involved in obtaining it in a third country. Tantalum, for example, comes 95% from the Congo, which makes it a supercritical material given the instability of this country. And, in the same way, Europe depends 98% on rare earths from China.
“If tomorrow China says they won’t sell them to us, we will be left without them,” says Gutiérrez Peinador expressively.
