1888: Río Tinto and Spain’s first climate strike

Submitted by AWL on 16 November, 2021 - 6:41 Author: Wilson Gibbons
The strike

In 1888 thousands of miners and farmers, along with their families, marched through the streets of Ríotinto, in the province of Huelva, and stood against the most powerful company in Spain. Led by anarchist trade unionists, this was Spain’s first climate strike and the beginning of a nascent environmental movement, demanding better pay, conditions, and, crucially, an end to open air copper refining (calcination).

The valley of the Río Tinto river in southern Spain has been used for ore mining for approximately 5000 years. Sections of the river flow bright red and orange due to the presence of heavy metals and iron. Its water is so acidic it is essentially barren and devoid of life beyond algae and extremophiles. Whilst this phenomenon is partially a natural one, scientists believe that drainage from the region’s long history of mining has also played a role in the river’s toxic chemistry.

In the 1870s the mining industry in the region was in a lull, the majority of Huelva’s inhabitants still survived on fishing and agriculture and the copper mine was haemorrhaging money. However, this changed in 1873 when the Río Tinto copper mine was sold to a British owned syndicate which then formed the Río Tinto Company, today the world’s second-biggest metals and mining corporation. They developed the industry in the region and turned the failing copper mine into a commercial success and the largest open pit mine in the world at the time.

Though the development of the region’s industry brought about technological innovations like railways, it also sparked a litany of environmental, labour and health issues for the residents of Ríotinto and surrounding towns. Chief among these was “the blanket”, an enormous black cloud which formed over the region as a result of the copper refining process in use at that time.

Miners, including children as young as ten, would dig up pyrite and then burn it in huge piles to extract the copper from within.

Hundreds of tonnes a day was burned, churning out huge amounts of sulphurous gases which poisoned the workers, other residents and livestock, and created acid rain throughout the region. Some days the blanket of smog over the region was so bad that miners and farmers could hardly leave their homes and couldn’t work, losing them days of pay.

Residents persisted in their opposition to the open air refining process and began attempting to pressure officials. In one letter to the Spanish Queen the Anti-Smoke League described the process, which had been banned in England 24 years prior, as, “the most primitive metallurgical process, already discarded by science and banned in the civilised world.”

On 1 February 1888 miners in the Río Tinto copper mine began a strike which grew over the next two days. At the same time farmers prepared a march on Río Tinto to demand the mayor take action and end open air calcination.

On 4 February, both demonstrations came together, numbering 12,000, at an entrance to the town. They united and marched to the town square chanting the slogans “Down with the fumes!” and “Long live agriculture!”

Upon entering the square the political leaders of the movement gave speeches and spoke to the mayor, attempting to negotiate. However, the civil Governor of Huelva, Augustin Bravo, arrived and attempted to “restore order”. He refused to let the local government restrict the calcinations and headed to the balcony to rebuke the protestors.

He asked the workers if they were happy with their wages and, when they replied that they weren’t, said he would negotiate with the mine owners. The workers chided him that they had been unemployed for three days and needed the result soon.

El Socialista newspaper reported that the mayor returned again with the Colonel of the Pavia Regiment. Waiting for him to speak the crowd “remained silent as at mass. Then the misfortunes occurred.”

In the silence, a shot was discharged with little clear indication of where it had come from or who gave the order. Another volley of shots, was then fired into the crowd at point blank range, and then officers began attacking with bayonets. The massacre lasted just fifteen minutes with an official death tole of 13, though many claim more than 150 people died, with witness reports at the time claiming the bodies were dumped or thrown into abandoned mines.

The bloody ending to the strike and protest got the events called “the year of the shots”. Much of the media blamed the protestors and downplayed the massacre, with the New York Times reporting that the striking miners were “a threatening mob” and that they had fired pistols and thrown dynamite cartridges.

The Spanish Government decreed later that year that there would be a halt on open air calcinations. However, in striking parallel to the disinformation modern fossil fuel companies engage in over climate change, the company sponsored studies which claimed that the sulphurous fumes were not only harmless but could help combat cholera! This led to the repeal and resumed legality of open air calcinations in 1890.

The story of the Río Tinto protest is a stark reminder that climate politics are class politics. That the world’s poor and working classes are already facing the sharpest edges of climate crises as they have done for centuries.

We should remember and celebrate the bravery of the workers who went up against Spain’s most powerful company for the environment and mourn their losses by building climate action with workers at its core, to overcome not just the destructive force of climate change but capitalism as well.

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