3rd Iberian meeting on the social and environmental impacts of mining, demand an end to impunity

Last Sunday, October 3, it ended in Touro (A Coruña) with a protest act demanding the end of impunity he 3rd Iberian meeting on the social and environmental impacts of mining. As a culmination of the meeting, a giant bannerin the mine Touro, demanding an end to mining impunity. Fifty representatives from numerous platforms from across the Iberian Peninsula that fight in their territories against the serious impacts of mining.

From November 1 to 3, the participating groups shared a pressing environmental situation and developed coordination and mutual support strategies.. Various training workshops, talks and debates were held on environmental defense strategies and alternatives to mining. The project to create an international forum against extractivism was presentedto which organizations from several continents are already joining. The progress of the Iberian Mining Observatorya project supported by the Ministry of Social Rights and Agenda 2030which maps bad practices in the sector and already has more than 100 documented cases.

The Galician town of Touro hosted this third meeting, as it is an area already very degraded by mining activity in which they intend to reopen a mining project that they consider to be a copy of the previous project that was denied in 2020 with a negative environmental impact declaration due to its foreseeable impacts on the river system of the Ulla River.

A reopening of the mining exploitation that now has the recent declaration of a Project of Strategic Interest by the Xunta de Galicia, despite the fact that, far from amending the previous project, Atalaya Mining and its subsidiary Cobre San Rafael once again put on the table a huge pond of 23 million cubic meters of toxic waste, 1.6 kilometers long and a height similar to that of the Cathedral of Santiago.

The Touro mine waste deposit would be less than 300 meters from the Arinteiro population center, whose population would be annihilated in the event of an accident.. In fact, the proposed installation would be illegal in countries such as Brazil, Ecuador or China.