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”.
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