Environmental Conflicts in Mining, Quarrying and Metallurgical Industries in the Iberian Peninsula (19th and 20th Century): Pollution and Popular Protest

Abstract

ENVIRONMENTAL CONFLICTS IN MINING, QUARRYING, AND METALLURGICAL INDUSTRIES IN THE IBERIAN PENINSULA (19TH AND 20TH CENTURY): POLLUTION AND PUBLIC PROTEST. Paulo E. Guimarães, NICPRI / University of Évora (Portugal) J. D. Pérez Cebada, Universidad of Huelva (Spain)

Comparative and transnational analyses of social conflicts, related to the environmental changes produced by modern and contemporary mining industries, have been a topic of growing academic interest for the last two decades. Those conflicts were often presented in different contexts as anti-modern peasant protests, indigenous resistance, or conflicts of interest and as a cause for social disruption. In the Iberian Peninsula, the more important mining basins were affected by the three classical types of pollution (atmospheric, water and soil pollution). Pollution also triggered persistent conflicts between mining companies and diverse social groups: rural communities, mining workers, scientists, sanitary professionals, and especially farmers and landowners. The former groups sometimes combined their forces, whereas the latter fought on their own.

This panel has gathered recent contributions on the environmental changes produced by the development of the mining industry in the Iberian Peninsula during the last two centuries and how it related with conflict and social change at community level and at the national and transnational levels.