Desde 2007, España ha experimentado un gran aumento en el número de licencias de prospección y en la concesión de nuevos proyectos mineros. Solo en 2018, se presentaron más de 2000 solicitudes de actividad minera. Esto supone un riesgo tanto para la economía como para el medioambiente.

Las razones de este enorme aumento de los proyectos mineros en España tienen que ver con tres factores, a saber:

a) la reorganización financiera que permite a las pequeñas empresas emprender grandes proyectos mineros con un alto componente especulativo;

b) el discurso de las materias primas críticas, que pretende movilizar determinados recursos minerales pasando por alto las implicaciones medioambientales; y

c) una legislación española obsoleta que alimenta este auge y no tiene en consideración los intereses sociales y ecológicos.

Este proceso ha encontrado el apoyo del Parlamento Europeo y la Comisión Europea, así como de los gobiernos regionales españoles que, de forma generalizada, promueven la minería.

Un factor adicional que explica el surgimiento de nuevos proyectos mineros especulativos es el estallido de la burbuja inmobiliaria española, que condujo a la crisis del sector extractivo de agregados para la construcción y de grandes empresas de este sector (por ejemplo, Sacyr), que buscan ahora entrar en el negocio de la minería.

 

In the last five years Spain has had a high increase of new open pit mining projects being processed. This acceleration has been justified by the need for scarce minerals and s metals that are essential for technology and energy generation and storage.

The report of Ecologistas en Accion “ Speculative mining in Spain” shows that one of the main causes of the mining boom in Spain are practices focused on speculation and not on the production of raw materials. The report analyzes four mining companies that have found in Spain a new ‘frontier’ market, but that have insuficiente capital and no previous mining experience, which is why they are called junior companies.

The report also analyzes the architectures designed to hide the multiple interests of these junior companies and identifies the political, academic and business actors engaged in their structures. By maximizing the benefits and minimizing the environmental and social impacts, the juniors use the mining projects, easily obtained in Spain, in the financial markets as capitalization instruments and buying and selling rights

To this process of financial extraction, there is also a process of extraction of public funds by these juniors that crystallizes in the subsidies received by the European Union and the Spanish regional governments for projects of mining innovation and employment generation.

Mining speculation is not something new. However, the novelty of this report lyes in that it exposes the role of the EU and the Spanish Regional governments in this extraction process. The report concludes that the task of such political actors is to publicly present mining as something positive while hiding the socio-ecological impact of such projects. Thus, they obtain the the social license necessary for the citizens to tolerate the slow violence that constitutes the indiscriminate, open-pit projects planned in Spain.