Up to a thousand people gathered between 17 and 19 April at a protest camp against keeping the sodium and potassium salt mines in operation in the Bages county, in the province of Barcelona. The reason? The national and international fallout caused by their owner, Israel Chemicals Ltd. (ICL), whose Iberian branch is known as Iberpotash and which has managed the mines in the municipalities of Sallent, Balsareny, Vilafruns and Súria since their privatisation in 1998.
Dozens of long-standing local platforms, such as Montasalat, have for years denounced the pollution generated in this area. Over two decades, the company has piled up mountains of waste that are believed to have leached into the Llobregat, one of the main rivers running through the region, after using tens of thousands of litres of water in an area that suffers recurrent droughts.
But the protesters were also mobilising against ICL’s production of white phosphorus, a chemical that ignites instantly when it comes into contact with oxygen and is very hard to extinguish. Prone to sticking to skin and clothing, it causes deep, severe burns, penetrating even through bone.
Its use was documented and verified by two human rights organisations on 16 October 2023 in the town of Daraiya, in southern Lebanon, by the Israeli army, as well as in the Gaza Strip.
