The Supreme Court has definitively cleared the way for the Ence de Pontevedra factory to continue operating until 2073 on land currently protected by the Coastal Law.
The sentence communicated this Tuesday morning puts an end to the long judicial journey of the City Council, the Asociación Pola Defensa da Ría (APDR) and Greenpeace against a factory that remodeled the seafront in the middle of the last century —and changed a good part of the Galician forest landscape forcing the monoculture of eucalyptus.
The Fifth Section of the Contentious-Administrative Chamber of the Supreme Court agrees with the company and estimates its appeals against the 2021 National Court ruling that was about to expel Ence from Galicia.
In essence, it validates the extension granted in 2016 by the acting government of Mariano Rajoy and which earned the former president being declared persona
non grata
by the Pontevedra City Council.
The reform promoted by the PP in the Coastal Law a few years earlier, in 2013, when Miguel Arias Cañete was Minister of Agriculture and the Environment, was decisive for the Rajoy government to be able to grant that extension.
Without it, the company would have had to dismantle the plant in 2018.
In the absence of knowing the ruling, since the Court has two weeks to communicate it to the parties with all the details and legal arguments, the magistrates consider that the previous concessions can be extended on land affected by the Coastal Law of 1988 provided that there are favorable environmental reports, as was the case.
Ence occupies, by virtue of a ministerial order granted during the Franco dictatorship, several thousand square meters of maritime-terrestrial public domain in the Lourizán marsh since 1959. That enclave, in front of a rich shellfish bank located at the mouth of the Pontevedra estuary (83,000 inhabitants), has divided the residents and the political class for years against the unity of a staff that, with the support of the unions, has defended the continuity of the posts of work above all.
Now the company, the European leader in the manufacture of eucalyptus pulp, breathes easy.
In a statement, it highlights that “the judgments of the Supreme Court clear up the uncertainty about the future of this facility and the 5,100 families linked to its activity.
In this way, they provide the company with the necessary security to undertake its future plans in this biofactory”.
The group accounts will also notice it, a lot.
"The reversal of the impairment of assets and provisions for expenses recorded in the financial statements of 2021, as a consequence of the judgments of the National Court, will have an estimated positive impact of 169 million euros on the profit of the company in 2022", recognize the group.
The shares on the Stock Market closed at 3.87 euros after an increase of 27%, and during the day its capitalization increased by 202 million euros, up to 950 million.
Ence's majority shareholder, with 29.4%, is Juan Luis Arregui, founder of Gamesa, who left the presidency in 2019 after 13 years in office.
The company of public origin linked to the old National Institute of Industry (between 1950 and its IPO in 1990), has prominent businessmen as shareholders,
The environmental groups have always demanded the closure of the Lourizán factory for environmental and social reasons and appealed to the National Court the granting of the extension that the Supreme Court has now declared valid.
In the 1990s, Greenpeace activists chained themselves to the main façade of the facilities and returned part of the waste that the plant dumped into the estuary.
The APDR also organized numerous demonstrations to denounce the environmental effects of the Galician pulp mill.
The company was sentenced for continued ecological crime in 2002 in a conformity trial in which six of its directors assumed the positions and had to compensate the Xunta with more than 432,000 euros to allocate them to the recovery of the estuary.
The sentences consisted of fines of 30,000 euros each for spills between 1985 and 1992.
Since then, the company, which in the past has seated former Popular Party politicians on its board, such as former minister Isabel Tocino, the former president of the Senate with the PP, Juan Ignacio Barrero or José Carlos del Álamo, former government adviser to Manuel Fraga in the Xunta, has defended the substantial improvement of waste treatment in its facilities with specific investments in the factory.
They ensure that their biofactory in the capital of the Rías Baixas is one of the first in the world in "environmental performance", and is one of the only two factories in Europe that produces totally chlorine-free paper pulp, from eucalyptus wood. Produced in forest crops in Galicia.
A large percentage of production is converted into tissue paper, although the pulp is also used for other paper applications.
However, in March 2021, the Pontevedra Prosecutor's Office opened an ex officio investigation into the safety conditions of the plant, following the statements made by the president of Ence, Ignacio Colmenares, "about an environmental risk with possible affectation of people". .
Colmenares made these statements in an internal context of the company, when he was addressing the workers regarding the future of the factory and the recording was leaked.
In essence, he warned that legal uncertainty derived from social opposition limited the group's commitment to Pontevedra, not an imminent danger.
The public ministry requested reports on the state of the plant from the Judicial Police of the Civil Guard Unit of the Nature Protection Service (Seprona) and various Xunta delegations, to assess whether the facilities posed a security risk of the surrounding population.
Shortly after, the complaint was filed after being dismissed by the Investigating Court number 2 of Pontevedra.
dialogue process
The group is aware that, beyond the ruling, a large part of society, from environmental organizations to neighborhood entities and the City Council itself, will continue to fight against their permanence even if the sentence is final.
That is why the president of the firm, Ignacio Colmenares, has been quick to ask for calm.
"We want to continue listening to everyone's voice," he said in the statement.
"This invitation to dialogue and active listening also includes the groups most critical of Ence Pontevedra's activity, which we will invite to meet with us again."
One of the points that your company will have to address will be the resumption of investments paralyzed by the uncertainty that until now weighed on its future.
Investments that in recent years have been redirected towards its Navia factory, for which it approved a 105 million improvement plan.
For the moment, the company has mentioned that its commitment will be transferred to the social plan that it develops in the region "immediately".
The reactions to the court ruling, however, reflect the depth of the conflict with pulp.
The president of the Xunta, Alfonso Rueda from Pontevedra, described it through his Twitter account as "a victory for many families who will be able to continue living and working" in the Galician capital.
"Sensible wins and legality wins, and after many months of uncertainty, jobs are secured."
Opposite Rueda, the national spokesperson for the BNG, Ana Pontón, believes that the sentence “will be remembered as unfair and inexplicable.
We know that multinationals have shadow powers.
Nothing will stop us from continuing to fight to get Ence out of the Pontevedra estuary.
Today stronger than ever."
Greenpeace also laments that "the environment loses out" by allowing the company to continue working "in a highly harmful activity that is incompatible with the Coastal Law, since it could take place anywhere else."
The last to speak on Tuesday did not do so with any statement, but at a press conference.
The nationalist mayor of Pontevedra, Miguel Anxo Fernández Lores, believes that the verdict “is a great surprise and means destroying the Coastal Law and the recovery of the coast.
I will never stop fighting in all possible ways to see fulfilled a dream that the vast majority of Pontevedra have to recover a space with high environmental quality”.
The politician recalled the "unequal fight against the State and big capital, but as Quevedo would say, a powerful gentleman is a gift of money."
The City Council will analyze the legal foundations of the sentence when it has the complete text.
