The Limited Times

Now you can see non-English news...

The five seconds that end a world in La Robla

2022-05-06T17:34:23.270Z


This municipality of León is sadly experiencing the collapse of the emblematic cooling towers of its coal-fired power plant and is now looking at hydrogen


Five seconds can be a breath, an eternity, a turning point, or all at once.

This is the case of La Robla (León), which holds its breath when the bells sing one o'clock.

Silence takes over this town until a thunder cracks this stillness.

Then dust and more stillness.

The two cooling towers of the historic coal-fired power plant that has sustained several generations of the place fall to the blow of dynamite.

The new era of energy production will replace these giant and polluting concrete facilities with a hydrogen plant, a change in the cycle that marks the fall of mining.

The Leonese mountain hopes that the modern initiative replaces a sector that is now obsolete that has maintained the area for decades.

Conversations in this town of 3,700 residents are monothematic, only interrupted by the chatter of the market in the square.

Wherever cabbages and pardina lentils are bought, there is a debate about the collapse, which destroys some 100-meter-high towers that have been inoperative since 2020. Times rule and the alternative is now green, something that they assume in La Robla, although it hurts to see how an era ends .

Touring the municipality shows a marked generation gap.

Carlota Prieto, 18, Rebeca Rodríguez and Bárbara Suárez, 17, have relatives who have worked in that plant that was opened in 1971 and powered by coal, but they understand that everything changes: “We are sad, but it seems good to us, that it pollutes a lot ”.

The event deserves a few pelas, they admit without much guilt, while three taller ladies show another position a couple of streets away.

"It seems very bad to us, those towers were a monument," censures bitterly Dulce González, 68, who has lived through the heyday and decline of these lands in which only the cement industry remains active after the collapse of coal and this center.

González exclaims that he has even put that colossal concrete couple as a profile picture and denies the ecological theses that support these landslides.

Emma Diez, 65, supports her friend and prays that there where "many miners died like dogs" work alternatives will sprout for that increasingly drowned youth.

The company that owns it, Naturgy, has decided to blow up this Leonese emblem with 184 kilos of explosives because after its cessation of activity, maintenance was too expensive.

Instead, they will promote a plant to produce 9,000 tons of green hydrogen per year, a more ecological source of energy.

More information

Naturgy will build a hydrogen plant with Enagás next to its old La Robla plant

The old facility no longer served after generating economic activity and good salaries that ended up in the 42 bars enjoyed by the 5,500 people who lived in the town in good times.

Now there are only 14 left and the oldest of the hoteliers, Jose Carlos Alonso, 59, is in pain: “I bet my head that there are not even 2,500 of us left living daily.”

The anniversary, ironic between coffees and tortillas, brings customers: "I wish things would fly every day."

What happened in La Robla stems from the continental trend of replacing this energy production with more sustainable ones, as happened a year ago in Velilla del Río Carrión (Palencia), where the towers of the power station that historically combed the skies and that so many checking accounts swelled.

Since 2011, 16 plants of this type have been closed in Spain, where only five remain operational.

Those who have flown are the friends of Ángela González, 26, who works in León city, but has returned for a season.

Madrid and Barcelona have recruited young people who were originally unemployed, so the alternative proposed by Naturgy offers both hope and some misgivings.

“The demolition will be fine if they put something that brings activity;

if not, we are dead”, summarizes González.

The mayor, Santiago Dorado, defends that beyond nostalgia we must look to the future: "It is a sad day, but sadder is that young people are leaving, a stage is opening with important projects that will bring employment and investment."

José Antonio Diago, former councilor of the United Left and former worker at the plant for 30 years, explains that the current annoying voices could well have complained decades ago to demand resources before the closure of the mine.

"I'm not going to see the demolition because it would make me cry," confesses Diago, contrary to those who take good positions to see what for some is a show and for others a drama.

The terrace of Alejandro Díez, 70 years old, becomes an ideal tribune to contemplate the explosion.

The man, who understands that times change, will find it strange to look out and not see the towers turned into rubble.

This retired civil guard, who worked for the Royal House in Franco's time and was an escort for Juan Carlos I, with whom he drank wine on Christmas Eve, returned to La Robla looking for peace and to hang up his official suit.

He has found it there, although with many lowered blinds in places where he used to be noisy.

The town, he laments, has suffered the same fate as those two towers: “Everything has gone down”.

In La Robla they think that now it depends on hydrogen to grow again.

Source: elparis

All news articles on 2022-05-06

You may like

Trends 24h

Latest

© Communities 2019 - Privacy

The information on this site is from external sources that are not under our control.
The inclusion of any links does not necessarily imply a recommendation or endorse the views expressed within them.