• Europe The EU decides to investigate the collapse of the Zaldibar landfill that the Basque Government had to detect
  • Politics.The catastrophe of the Zaldibar landfill puts 'lehendakari' Íñigo Urkullu in distress
  • The victims.Families of the deceased in the Zaldibar landfill say that their pain is increasingly unbearable

On February 6 at 4:40 p.m. the technical director of Verter Recycling telephoned a technician from the Basque Government's Department of the Environment to report that the Zaldibar landfill (Vizcaya) had collapsed. Four months later, the huge 1.7 cubic meter tongue of industrial waste - including asbestos - keeps the bodies of worker Alberto Solaluze and subcontracted technician Joaquín Beltrán trapped .

A human and environmental catastrophe that is lengthening because the excavators have only managed to screen 8% of the total collapse and the causes of the tragedy are postponed by the judicial investigation, while the Basque Government points to the company and is angered by the unforeseen irruption of the European Union.

The Iñigo Urkullu government faces the electoral campaign with the ballast of the Zaldibar landfill as a Damocles sword that questions its public management. The collapse of the private facility located on a hill next to Ermua undressed an elephant in the hall, which generated tax revenues of half a million euros per year and facilitated the cheap management of 511,000 tons of steel and waste from paper mills, including 4,253 tons of material. of construction with asbestos.

Almost 2.8 million tons stored by a family clan company - headed by José Ignacio Barinaga - with only six workers on staff and who had subcontracted Joaquín Beltrán to manage the continuous arrival of industrial waste.

According to the latest data from the Basque Government, the corpse search device has screened 137,755 cubic meters of rubble - out of a stored total of 1.7 million cubic meters - without locating either of the two workers.

60,000 residents mobilized

The autonomic Executive assumed from the afternoon of February 6 the emergency work, first, and the search and stabilization of the collapse, later, before the magnitude of an environmental catastrophe that has mobilized a large part of the 60,000 residents residing in municipalities such as Ermua , Eibar , Elgeta , Zalla , Markina and Zaldibar . Grouped on the Zaldibar Argitu platform -Clear Zaldibar, in Euskera-, hundreds of residents of these towns demonstrated this Saturday demanding not only the location of the buried workers, but demanding political responsibilities from the Basque Government for the lack of control of the landfill.

The request for "responsibilities" in the shouts of the marches held in half a dozen municipalities in the area goes beyond the intense search work in which up to 100 people participate, among the technicians of several subcontracted companies, the workers of a dozen of heavy machines -excavators and trucks- and of emergency personnel and ertzainas with search dogs.

A slow screening of tons of waste - on June 3, 2,192 cubic meters were screened - with results well below social expectations. The discovery of Alberto Sololuze's car turned into a jumble of irons on April 5 gave rise to the hope of a nearby discovery of the bodies, but the buckets of the excavators on the point of screening the entrance area to the landfill without finding a trace or Alberto or Joaquín Beltrán.

The Basque Government has already budgeted an expenditure of nine million euros (with VAT) to meet the expenses made in these four months and on June 5, a first invoice of 3.4 million euros was issued to the company that is now studying the responsible for Verter Reciclyng.

The judicial investigation

Sources of the company assured that they have insurance policies and that they deposited a deposit of 1.1 million euros in 2012 when it began its activity. José Ignacio Barinaga's company faces two alleged crimes in the courts and three administrative files opened by the Basque Government and the Vizcaya Provincial Council as a result of a collapse that occurred two days after its workers detected cracks in the mass of spill.

The judicial investigation opened in the Investigating Court number 1 of Bilbao has stopped the political and social debate on the causes of the tragedy and its responsibilities.

The counselor Iñaki Arriola (PSE-EE) has stressed in his public appearances that the company was responsible for fulfilling the conditions established in the authorization to start the activity, granted in 2011, which were later modified allowing other materials such as asbestos to be stored.

Arriola, pointed out by the opposition, explained in Parliament that, in both 2017 and 2018, settlement reports minimized the effect of "significant horizontal movements" on the landfill slope. And it showed a report from the Gipuzkoan company Lurtek , delivered by the Basque Government on January 21, 2020, which assured that the landfill was "stable".

Just two weeks later the landfill collapsed along a 300-meter slope, 150 meters wide, until it stopped on the three lanes of the highway that connects Bilbao with San Sebastián.

European research

The Basque Government must maintain before the European Union that it fulfilled its inspection and control obligations after the decision communicated last May 13 by the Commissioner for the Environment, Oceans and Fisheries, Virginijus Sinkevicius , to intervene after detecting the "serious deficiencies" in landfill and lack of administrative control.

An answer to questions asked by MEPs from the PP and Citizens, which places Zaldibar on the EU's agenda in the face of the unrest of Lehendakari Urkullu. The also PNV candidate to be re-elected on July 12 knows that Zaldibar will be one of the pillars of the opposition to question his leadership.

Carlos Iturgaiz , aspiring lehendakari for the Basque PP, denounced this Saturday next to the Zaldibar landfill "the thunderous silence" installed in the Basque Country to "hide the shame of the PNV". An argument with which Iturgaiz links Zaldibar with the patronage network of nationalists, especially with family companies that exploit public concessions such as quarries and landfills.

Precisely, the PP, through its MEP Dolors Montserrat , is pressing in Brussels for the EU to analyze whether or not the management of Basque landfills meets European guidelines, and has already registered requests for information about the presence of asbestos in Zaldibar when This residue was not foreseen in an authorization granted in 2007 with Juan José Ibarretxe as lehendakari .

The truth, demanded by the relatives of Sololuze and Beltrán, will also have to wait.

In accordance with the criteria of The Trust Project

Know more

  • Basque Country
  • PNV
  • Inigo Urkullu
  • Basque Country Elections
  • Environment

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