By Joan Francesc Peris, Greens Spokesperson of Spain.
Since the end of 2013 in Spain fracking to search for subsurface gas, a fossil fuel that is embedded in the bedrock thousands of feet deep, is allowed. The government of Spain’s Popular Party, once again dodged the democratic, economic, social and political debate on this new system of exploration and extraction of fuel, and using their majority in the Senate of the Spanish Parliament through a vote disposal introduced in the las minute in a law to guarantee power an amendment to the law 34/1998 of the hydrocarbon sector and enabled the use of hydraulic fracturing (fracking) and, by extension, all air, sea or land means necessary .
When in many countries it is being questioned the use of fracking to obtain gas due to the dangers of contamination of aquifers and the potential seismic risk, even when states like France and Bulgaria have banned and others like Germany , Britain, Switzerland and South Africa have adopted moratoria to check the possible effects on people and the environment of this aggressive technique, the PP in Spain stole the political, scientific and social necessary debate and gave the green light by the back door to a power law. when Spain had seen the rise of an important anti-fracking movement which had even achieved that some regions have approved the prohibition of this technique in its territory, as had happened in April 2013 in Cantabria. With its legislative action at the end of 2013, the PP managed to authorize fracking in a state law and thus argue before the Constitutional Court that the issue of hydrocarbon exploration is a statewide competence and thus declare unconstitutional the Cantabrian law and others such as Rioja or Navarra.
The move is significant of how PP understands government in a democratic country, which also has a constitution with respect to the will of nationalities and regions and autonomous governments. The hydrocarbons law is modified with a final disposition of a law of the electricity sector in order to have a legal instrument that would invalidate previously adopted regional laws, such as the Cantabrian anti-fracking law on the grounds that the hydrocarbon law is Basic. Maybe that’s why so crass a maneuver, no matter how legal it is, the judgment of the Constitutional Court invalidating the Cantabrian law had three separate opinions that put forward the debate on the competences the matter of health and prevention of potential risks that this aggressive technique has.
Very irresponsible is the PP’s government of Spain in its energy policy and its interpretation of the meaning of democracy in a much more decentralized country. But the ministers of the PP, as Mr Cañete who has just been elected EU commissioner for air quality and energy, and his head Mr. Rajoy, know no other democracy that their views and opinion clearly in favour of fuel fossil and big multinational firms on the sector of oil and gas. They show no doubts like other countries whether the fracking has negative or no impact on the land, subsoil, aquifers … do not listen to alternative energy sectors, given the chilling figures of 2013 air pollution beating all records and, of course, do not pay any attention to regional governments which, to defend their territories, dare to legislate against fracking or try to prevent oil drilling in offshore platform as in the case of the government of the Canary Islands.
As if it was still the centralist Franco state, PP rules at their will, when they want and how they want, in spite of their endangering of the health of people and the health of democracy in Spain, both increasingly ill at the hands of one of the more ultraconservative parties of all governing in Europe. Naturally anti-fracking platforms of plural and extensive social and political composition, the environmental movement, agricultural unions, many mayors and councilors, some autonomous governments and many people will continue fighting fracking and the Greens will be with them until the end, whatever they are the government rules we suffer.