Almost thirty projects are coming up in Spain to start new mining activities to extract the metals needed for supplies related to the energy and digital transition. However, it is not a rosy road for the promoters, as many of the initiatives encounter strong social resistance due to the environmental impacts of the projects.
The latest and most intense conflict is the one being experienced in Cáceres, where the Australian company Infinity Lithium and its subsidiary Extremadura New Energies are promoting a plan to extract lithium from the old tin mine in the area of Valdeflores, about 800 meters from the town center of Cáceres. The initial project, an open pit operation, was rejected by the Junta d'Extremadura, as the urban development plan prohibits mining less than 2 kilometers from the historic core. But the promoting company has rearmed itself with arguments and promotes, as an alternative, an underground mine in a gallery convinced that it will be able to avoid the obstacles that arose in the first attempt.
Spain is experiencing a boom in metal mining initiatives, driven mainly by foreign companies.
“The huge increase in the consumption of key metals such as copper, aluminum and of course critical materials for Europe means that market prices are going up, and they will go up even more. All this makes interest grow, especially in the areas that were already in operation and where there was a stoppage of extraction", confirms Vicente Gutiérrez Peinador, president of the National Confederation of Mining and Metallurgy ( Confedem).
In Spanish territory, 28 projects have been collected in different stages of processing to extract metals (lithium, nickel, tungsten, palladium, platinum...), including the critical metals for Europe. In addition, there are 11 mines in exploitation of critical materials, and another 90 projects are in the exploration phase (so there are 129).
Spain is the third country in mineral resources in Europe, after Sweden and Finland, although it remains to be seen whether all this will be converted into exploitable reserves.
In fact, many of these projects run into opposition from citizen or environmental organizations. "The main stumbling block is the environmental impact statements, because the procedure is associated with all the complaints that are presented. Behind each project, a platform of 40 people who don't want it emerges. They make a lot of noise and that makes it slow down a lot," says Gutiérrez Peinador.
To avoid opposition to the Cáceres lithium mine, the company has announced that its plan is now to build an underground mine; and, for this reason, promises that only renewable energy will be used in its processes, as well as waste water from treatment plants (so as not to take resources from the supply). "It was one of the greenest and most ecological projects. In taxes alone, the Junta d'Extremadura 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, mobiles and renewable energies). "They rush to present it as an industrial project to gain followers in the face of Extremadura's scarce industry; but it's just a mine, with rubble, mud ponds and a chemical treatment plant. No matter how much they twist the legality, due to the level of pollution and consumption of resources, it is not compatible with a city next door", says Eduardo Mostazo, spokesperson for the Salvemos la Montaña de Cáceres platform.
Other projects have been shelved. This is the case of the Matamulas rare earth deposit in the municipalities of Torrenueva and Torre de Juan Abad (Ciudad Real). There, the company Quantum aims to extract monazite, the raw material for 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 mean "the fragmentation of the ecological connectivity" of the cores of special protection zones for birds and other fauna.
One of the characteristics that is repeated in these new mining projects is that they often correspond to old abandoned exploitations that, at the end of the years, are 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 is now sold at 40,000.
However, the reopening of mines often takes place without the old abandoned mines having been properly restored, according to complaints from environmental groups. “The reason is obvious; companies aim to make money and obviously restaurants don't make money; they make money by selling the mineral", explains Joám Evans, Ecologistes en Acció expert, who criticizes the insufficiency of the bank guarantees deposited to deal with this rehabilitation. These are projects that are asleep or hibernating and suddenly wake up, so that the old environmental damage appears as a wound in the territory to heal.
A paradigmatic example is that of the San Finx mine, in the municipality of Lousame (A Coruña), where tin and wolfram were mainly extracted. The mine reopened in 2009 after they approved a new exploitation project and a restoration plan that did not undergo an environmental impact assessment. Environmental groups have denounced heavy metal pollution from mine tailings and debris on the adjacent river and the Muros-Noia estuary, 7 km downstream, a very important shellfishing area.
There have also been cases where initiatives fail to thrive because they do not pass the environmental test. It happened with the Salave mine, in Tapia de Casariego (Asturias), where the largest unexploited gold deposit in Europe, excluding Russia, is located. The Principality of Asturias agreed that in 2014 it would issue a negative environmental impact statement for the mining project of this gold deposit due to "unfavorable reports from the Cantabrian Hydrographic Confederation". The developer company, EMC, estimates that there are around 30 tons of gold in the area. At the current market price, this huge amount of gold would have a value of around 1.7 billion euros. To avoid the impact of fluvial discharges, EMC is now considering a direct discharge into the sea with a submarine outfall in the Cantabrian.
