Enrique Ortega Gironés, international mining consultant
Original publication (in Spanish, Entrevisttas.com)
Since several months ago there has been a significant increase of news related to the Spain’s mining potential in media coverage. This increase is due to the recent shift in the European Union’s view on mining activities. The radical change began with the creation of a list of strategic and critical minerals on which Europe was heavily dependent on foreign supplies. Then, to address the identified shortcomings, the European Critical Raw Materials Act was passed in an attempt to stimulate the search for these minerals in European territory. This initiative has been supported in Spain with the development of an Action Plan for the Sustainable Management of Mineral Raw Materials, currently in the public information phase. Complementarily, the European Commission officially announced its support for 47 strategic projects focused on critical raw materials, seven of which are in Spain. These projects represent the vanguard of a plan that will be expanded to include new projects and whose objective is to reduce dependence on the supply of strategic minerals by 10% within ten years.

Rehabilitated landscape of a large coal open pit (Emma Mine) near Puertollano, Ciudad Real province. The ancient hole has been filled-up with the sterile rocks and the original soil (previously removed) has been reinstalled in its original place and now is an olive tree plantation.
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