Local opposition, page-26

Extract from El Salto 17 January 2021 (google translated):

The role of the Junta de Extremadura and the Cáceres Provincial Council.

The Junta de Extremadura, de facto, has always been deciding in favor of the company, even though the statements speak of scrupulous respect for legality and listening to the public. Each legal instrument pressed from the mining corporation has found its favorable echo. The previously explained granting of the research permit, a fundamental procedure to unblock the process due to the material possibilities of continuing with the work it represents, is the last and clearest example. Without waiting for judgments or procedural resolutions, the fait accompli policy. A reality that agrees and fits perfectly with the behavior adopted in the rest of the conflicts that mining is opening up throughout Extremadura.

The president, Guillermo Fernández Vara, navigates for his part between three discursive axes. On the one hand, that of calculated clarity: what the town of Cáceres says will be done (it is conceivable that through its elected council ...). On the other, that of legality: what the law establishes will be done (the Minas law of 1973? The law that was changed to measure to move Valdecañas forward?). Finally, that of the appeal to justice: the Valdeflores conflict will be resolved in the courts (how did it happen, going back to the same thing, in Valdecañas, where sentence after sentence was no longer applied?). All unanswerable arguments and all, placed in contradiction to each other, absolutely open to interpretation. Hence, perhaps, the growing distrust of the opposition to the mine in the face of the final attitude of the regional administration.

The Provincial Council plays and has also played on the terrain of a calculated balance in the face of public opinion that, for practical purposes, has operated in favor of extractivist purposes. As an example, a button: in the plenary session of December 2016 of the Cáceres Provincial Council, the transfer of two farms to the company was approved and signed by the previous president of the council, Charo Cordero (recently deceased) to be occupied with machinery for prospecting, tasting, wells, drilling, ponds, pits, and so on. Works are loves.

Lithium presses from above and from without.

At the state level, and even internationally, the situation is clearer, with an almost general consensus in prioritizing, openly, the extraction of lithium. For the European Union, it is strategic to ensure its own resources for this mineral in the face of the hegemony of the People's Republic of China in the sector, considering as a key circumstance the development of what has come to be called the value chain around the electric car . Because many batteries will be needed if the automotive industry's commitment to this means is maintained, and it will take a lot of lithium for them. Extract, process and produce, in short.

The debate on the possible reality of the electric car as a means of mass transport and its viability is parked. Spain is also the second largest European producer in the automotive sector and, in the current crisis situation, the salvation of that industry and its employment do not seem trivial matters on any government agenda. Brussels or Madrid will have a lot to say, if they are not doing so already, in all this dispute. In this framework, where each gesture gains value, we must understand the recent statement by the Minister of Industry, Reyes Maroto, on the occasion of the Automotive Roundtable, announcing more than 10,000 million European funds for the modernization of the sector, with the declared objective of keeping Spain in the race for the development of new models of electric vehicles.

For another time, there is also the analysis of the extraction of other minerals, which are also cited in the research permit (which includes tin, rubidium, tungsten, lithium and cesium). Special mention requires cesium, specifically, with a market value that multiplies by 680 that of lithium itself. While the kilo of lithium has a price of 106 euros, that of cesium shoots up to 68,848 euros.

The Valdeflores project is entering a definitive phase. It is not dead, far from it, depending on the consensus and the strong political and industrial tensions indicated, with immense capacity to influence in its transfer to the autonomous and local framework, but it is far from being an incontestable reality. As not a few opponents of megamine acutely point out, the Valdecaballeros nuclear power plant, a project in which much more energy and resources had been invested, or, they add, not so long ago, already stopped in its day, with the mobilization, the Tierra de Barros refinery. The swords are going to be, this year that has just begun, higher than ever.