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Good day, one interesting article from spanish notices. I hope you like:
The fever of the copper re-opens mines in Spain.
The miner seizes strongly the steering wheel of a Land Rover and is left to devour for the land, up to 450 meters of depth. They are a few minutes of decrease for a narrow tunnel, across a track with a sea slope that crosses the entrails of an old deposit in the heart of the saw of Huelva. Below the air thickens, the water filters through the walls and forms big puddles of a dark color: by something the mine, which now is re-opened, was baptized as Dyed Waters. The miner is called Agne Ahlenius, is Swedish and has worked for half a world, from the Arctic to South America, though he has thrown roots in Andalusia for almost 10 years. There lived in the first person the crisis that swept the last Spanish mines of metals, and with an enterteining accent it he peels the reasons of the new one to re-arise: " The prices have gone off. The deposits that before were not profitable now it are. The mines re-open and it means money, employment and investments. I of here already do not move ".
It was difficult million Euros - and a rosary of painful conflicts - to close the mines, which have left in Huelva a violent, degraded landscape but simultaneously attractively. The last ones were sealed in 2002. Since then, the price of the copper has trebled. That of the zinc has doubled. With the prices for the clouds, there comes the moment to re-open the old deposits and to explore new projects
" There is an unusual interest to find new developments and to recover former mines. It is not possible to go against this trend, which exceeds with much Spain ", there pronounces the president of the management one, Jose Moya.

Three big projects in march are foreign. Two Canadian multinationals and the Swedish one they exploit three principal mines-Aguablanca, The Crosses and Dyed Waters-, with a joint investment that rubs 1.000 million Euros and that supposes the creation of 1.100 direct employments and almost 5.000 indirect ones, more the derivatives of the construction of the mining infrastructures.
There are also tens of projects in different phases spread by Spain: the multinationals demand new grants in Asturias, in Castilla and León, in Extremadura. But the great star returns to be the saw of Huelva, the heart of the strip pirítica, a rocky underground band with minerals of great economic interest that spreads from Seville to the Alentejo and the Algarve, in Portugal.
Used profusely for the construction, the communications and almost any thing, the demand has shot the price of the copper - and of the majority of the metals - for the voracity of the emergent economies, which join the needs of the western economies. China lives through his particular fever for the copper, the zinc and, in general, any type of mineral and raw material. And hither to the global thing, because this trend has enormous repercussions in Spain.
Whitewater, in Badajoz, opened it forbids it in 2005. With an investment of 90 millions, the Swedish Lundin employs approximately 340 persons in the extraction of nickel and copper. But the strong plates will come this year. The Canadian Inmet is giving the last retouches to a pharaonic project to 10 kilometres of Seville, a great mine of copper to sky opened in whose construction has invested 480 millions and at that now a thousand of persons are employed.
Chileans, Mexicans, Americans, Australians: the list is international to scanty months of initiating the extraction, which will generate 300 direct employments. " The mine includes a chemical plant, and the first sheet of copper will go out of here in September. The extraction will be 72.000 tons a year, a fourth part of the national demand ", affirms the director of The Crosses, Luis Vega
To only 150 kilometres, Dyed Waters he presents big parallelisms with The Crosses, but under land. Closed in 2001, it has initiated already the countdown for his reopening: the extraction of the minerals that shelters this mine surrounded with orange trees will begin in August. Iberian, another Canadian group, foresees to obtain 1,7 million tons of mineral. The director of the Spanish subsidiary, the Peruvian Américo Villafuerte, seeks to form now the insole-220 direct employments - with miners of the zone. " Both big obsessions are to attack the legitimate worry for the environment with an impeccable project and to allow the development of the zone where the mineral is extracted ", is assured by him. Villafuerte sees "logical" the fears of the Administrations, which answer to a past riddled with problems, with interminable crises, with speculation. " It is possible that there are projects that only want to take advantage of the high prices, but there are others that they will employ and wealth for 20 years ", counter-attack. The unions share these dreads. But simultaneously they do not conceal " the positive thing that is for any depressed zones that arise medium-term projects ", affirms Juan Carlos Álvarez, of WORKERS' COMMISSIONS. " Now collaterals are requested millionaires, both environmental and sociolabor. Too many traumatic processes it has had already, is not any more that to see the problems of the coal. But there are several projects ilusionantes ", adds Salvador Nera, of GENERAL TRADE UNION OF WORKERS
The list is extensive. The Irish Ormonde has plans for The Brambles (Huelva) and Barrueco (Salamanca). The Canadian group Mawson waits for permissions to obtain uranium in Extremadura. And there are many more. In Huelva, Agne Ahlenius, the miner of the Land Rover, seizes the beak and makes jump sparks of the walls of Dyed Waters. " Copper, zinc, something of silver ", it indicates with a rock piece in the hand. " It is hard to be here below ", is held by it, " but it is what a miner wants. This is going to make turn many people
A project in the making shines strongly in to re-arise from the mining industry. Stained River, in Huelva, is the most universal name and surely most exploited of the mining basin. The place most similar to Mars who exists in this world, according to the FISHNET, still shelters sufficient copper as to try to attack the reopening of the mine, wrapped in a polemic long billiard cue from his closing, in 2000. The Cypriot group Emed has presented already a project to the Meeting of Andalusia to exploit the mine " once there is solved the economic and judicial situation - that derives from the last closing - and the confidence of the Administration is obtained ", he assures in her there sedates of the company the Australian Harry Anagnostaras, the first executive of the Spanish subsidiary . With an investment foreseen of 100 millions, " there is metal for a project of world class, but there are also enormous, historical problems ", he admits. Emed registered Guillermo Gutiérrez as president in Spain. Gutiérrez lived through the closing of Stained River as Andalusian counselor of Industry, and eight years later he closes a strange circle: he is the manager of convincing to the Meeting that it suits to re-open the mine.
Diario El País- España 03/022008
Autor: CLAUDI PÉREZ - Almonaster la Real - 03/02/2008
Traducción libre al inglés : Brokenstone 03/02/2008