If there is anything that will highlight the year 2024 for Cáceres, it is that the debate about the mine will be more alive than ever. Next year is supposed to be the definitive one for the most controversial project in the city in the last decade. That period will begin in a few weeks by the mining company. Extremadura New Energies, as soon as it presents in the Board the pass of the exploration permit that it has granted to the exploitation, key authorization. The company advanced at first that it would ask for it after the summer, then specified that from October and in its last manifestations it affirms that it will do it in November or December, a deadline that it will meet because it is the one it is presenting in order to obtain financing.
The main group that has opposed the mine in Cáceres has been the Salvemos la Montaña platform. This Thursday night he went one step further ahead of this year that is so important for the project. And he did it with an open letter addressed to the mayor, Rafael Mateos, who is asked not to be remembered "as the mayor who polluted his city." Although it is the Board, with its general directorates of Mines and Sustainability, that has the most to say, the city council is also competent in the planning of the territory, which is not a minor matter as evidenced by the judgments that have ruled against modifications of the urban planning plan that affected the protection of the soil.
In that open letter, the platform insists that the mine project brings with it more disadvantages than advantages, "the negative consequences it will have in our city will be disproportionate with respect to the benefits." The dissemination of the letter comes a week after the mayor repeated the message he most exposes about the mine: if he obtains the environmental authorization, the condition set by the city council, which would have to modify its urban planning plan, is that there must be associated industries, for now what the promoters offer is a plant that would process the mineral for the achievement of lithium hydroxide for its subsequent use in batteries.
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In its open letter, the platform claims to understand the longing for "an industrial Cáceres" that Mateos wants, but this "cannot lead us to despair and accept" an extractive industry that "generate hardly any employment and whose disadvantages do not compensate" for a foreseeable "pollution of the soil, water and air.
