A POBRA DO CARAMINAL: Thousands of people on boats and on land staged a “surf and turf” protest in northwest Spain on Saturday against a planned textile factory and the reopening of a copper mine.
Protesters in the coastal city of A Pobra do Caraminal, in Spain’s Galicia region, decried what they said were the environmental risks posed by both facilities.
Organisers, who termed the rally a “surf and turf” protest, said they had suspicions about the plans by Portuguese company Altri to build a factory to make lyocell, a semi-synthetic textile.
They said they feared it was just cover to build a cellulose plant that would pollute the region’s Ulloa River and its Arousa Estuary.
The site of the factory is in Palas de Rei, close to a section of the Santiago de Compostela pilgrimage route used by hundreds of thousands of people every year.
The organisers, calling themselves the Platform for the Defence of the Arousa Estuary, said they also opposed the planned reopening of an open-cast copper mine in Touro, just east of the city of Santiago de Compostela. The mine was closed in 1986.
Manoel Santos, a regional representative for Greenpeace, said the Altri textile factory “could spell the death of the Arousa Estuary”.
Galicia’s regional government has declared the factory to be ecologically viable.
A spokeswoman for Greenfiber, Altri’s subsidiary in charge of the project, denied any pollution risk. She told Galician public television that the factory “scrupulously respects all EU environmental rules”.
