He Iberian Meeting on the Social and Environmental Impacts of Mining 2024organized by environmental and civil organizations, will take place in the municipality of Touro (A Coruña) from Friday 1st to Sunday 3rd November. More than fifty representatives from numerous platforms from across the Iberian Peninsula that fight in their territories against the serious impacts of mining extractivism will participate.
Touro has been the town chosen to celebrate the Iberian Meeting on the Social and Environmental Impacts of Mining 2024. He Iberian Meeting on the Social and Environmental Impacts of Mining 2024 It is organized by environmental and civil organizations. This is the third edition of this space for reflection, learning and coexistence in which more than fifty representatives of different movements, platforms and groups involved in the resistance to mining projects in Spain and Portugal.
For three days, from November 1 to 3, the groups will share a pressing situation and develop coordination and mutual support strategies. Various training workshops, talks and debates will also be held on environmental defense strategies and alternatives to mining. The project for the creation of a International forum against extractivismto which organizations from several continents are already joining. Finally, 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 hosts this event because 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 carbon 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 Galiciadespite the fact that environmental organizations, far from amending the previous project, Atalaya Mining and its subsidiary Cobre San Rafael put it back 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.
Environmental organizations They also denounce that the waste deposit of the Touro mine would be less than 500 meters from the Arinteiro population center. whose population would be wiped out in the event of an accident. In fact, they point out that the proposed installation would be illegal in countries such as Brazil, Ecuador or China.
For this reason, they announce that with the holding of the meeting in Touro They want to support and encourage the neighborhood platform that tries to prevent the fraud involved in declaring a proposal that was already declared environmentally unviable as a strategic industrial project. They warn that the declaration as a strategic project means halving the processing times, not being subject to the urban planning authorizations, the declaration of social interest for expropriation purposes and the granting of subsidies without competitive competition, with which the aim is express processing that prevents public participation and that sectoral organizations do not have enough time to issue their reports.
What happens in Touro, and in Galicia in general with mining, is repeated throughout Spanish and Portuguese geographyespecially in the territories that mining has decided to turn into a sacrifice zone. We always find ourselves with a way of operating the sector that is totally irresponsible with the environment, seeking to save on security and restoration measures to increase profits. The worst thing is that they often achieve this thanks to the permissiveness of administrations that forget their obligation to protect the natural environment and its inhabitants.