Exploring the Role of Identities and Perceptions of the Future in a Post-coal Mining Region: The Demolition of Andorra Coal-fired Cooling Towers (Spain) as a Tipping Point

Since Spain joined the European Union in 1986, coal has been a declining sector, largely due to the lack of market competitiveness of Spanish coal. There have been several transition phases in different mining areas, most of which have failed to create an alternative business fabric to keep the job positions created by coal mining. Currently, the region of Teruel is under the influence of the European Union’s Just Transition Fund, aiming to achieve new economic opportunities based on decarbonisation policies and strategies (Mayes et al., 2014; Marshall, 2016). Teruel is a province of Spain in the Autonomous Community of Aragón that covers an area of 14,810 km² (INE, 1997) and in 2021 had a population of 134,545 inhabitants (INE, 2023). In this research we focused only on the parts of the region included in the local strategy covered by the Just Transition Plan and in particular on the municipality of Andorra. This research thus concentrates on a total of 31,509 people and seven localities. Population in the area is declining and ageing, with a 13% population loss since 1998 and 20% of people being over 65 years old.

Andorra is a traditional coal and carbon-intensive region (CCIR), originally characterised by extractive activities. The production of coal in the province of Teruel fell from 3,531,000 tons per year in 1997 to 2,339,000 tons per year in 2010 (34% reduction). The last coal mine, which closed in 2020, was used to generate electricity in the local coal-powered power plant of 1101.4 MW capacity, following a request by the central government in 2018. A total of 532 workers were affected by the closure, 204 being part of the large power corporation ENDESA workforce and 328 employed by subcontractors (Fig. 1).

A map of Spain marks the different regions, including Andorra, with labels indicating the location of coal mines and power plants, as well as the closure of the last coal mine in 2020 and the impact on workers. An inset on the left highlights a part.

The following methods have been used to frame the study and collect the data needed for this case study:The results of this data analysis are reproduced in the next sections. Most common perspectives relating to the value and judgement of events, particularly the ones that have a significant public dimension and social impact, such as the closure of a coal-fired plant for the local population, originate from a narrow set of stakeholders, usually those who are able to significantly influence how value is perceived by the wider community (Armstrong et al., 2011; Zimbalist, 2010). As the appraisal of value cannot occur in a vacuum (Holbrook & Corfman, 1985; Getz, 2018), the analysis was shaped by a set of reference points or temporal events that help to fix the standards by which those events will be judged or valued, including the periods before and after the announcement of the closure of the coal plant, the initiation of large-scale solar and wind projects to substitute the electricity generated by the Thermal Power Plant and the demolition of the cooling towers. As a result, the reactions of different stakeholders (trade unions, local administrations, business associations, the energy company, etc.) which were involved in forming policy directives (Armstrong et al., 2011; Zimbalist, 2010) associated with the decarbonisation process were collected in relation to the above-mentioned temporal events or reference points. The data gathered from the scientific literature review, the content analysis of the policy documents, the first workshop and the first set of interviews were used for a scoping purpose, to better identify the main problems in the area, general perceptions of stakeholders and issues at stake. The data gathered from the content analysis of newspapers, the second set of stakeholder interviews and the second workshop allowed us to go deeper into discourses on identity issues, cultural attributes and social imaginaries, as well as contrasting the perceptions and feelings on the coal phase-out process and its effects, how they were coping with it, their level of frustration, acceptance and hope. This methodological triangulation between the content analysis of newspapers, the second set of stakeholder interviews and the second workshop, and the combination of three data collections to approach the study of the same object, allowed to gather more comprehensive insights, balancing the strengths and weaknesses of each method (Denzin, 2017). The information was processed in order to understand how the community (symbolically) was coping with the energy transition and decarbonisation process promoted by European and national authorities in the town of Andorra (in Teruel province, Aragon), also in terms of identity and cultural attributes (research questions). This data analysis process provided input associated with the level of resistance or acceptance of the new narrative on the regional energy transition by the community and the contrast and differences among stakeholders’ perceptions. The analysis focused on how stakeholders perceived the different phases of the decarbonisation process and their level of resistance/acceptance and how they valued the main decarbonisation events, but also their proposals, views and recommendations on how these events should shape and impact governance and policy-making in the region from a normative perspective, which were obviously different depending on how each stakeholder positioned themself in the policy-making spectrum.

One of the main catalysts of coal extraction decline was Spain’s entry into the European Union in 1986. This led to the adoption of European coal and energy regulations which were stricter with respect to environmental standards, increasing domestic production costs. In parallel with the end of coal subsidies by 2025 (Galindo, 2022), domestic coal was exposed to the EU market and the need to compete with more competitive production facilities. In Spain, there were five coal-mining restructuring plans between 1990 and 2018 that caused a severe decrease in mining workforce and production, with a reduction of 20–25% of the population employed in these sectors over the past 25 years in the coalfields in Asturias, Castile-León and Teruel (Aragón), as well as a complete social and cultural transformation process (Sanz-Hernández, 2020).

Throughout the operational period, the Thermal Power Plant of Andorra operated in a nearly monopolistic environment and the region’s inhabitants enjoyed many economic and social benefits (high salaries, energy bill exemptions, early retirement, etc.), which far exceeded the rest of the region and generated strong dependence of the local population on this company. This relationship of dependence was based on an individual and social connection that gave the inhabitants of Andorra and the surrounding areas a sense of attachment and a relative feeling of security and confidence in the future (Sanz-Hernández, 2020). Furthermore, in this context, when the request from ENDESA to the government to close the plant was made public in 2018, both media and interviews with stakeholders reflected that many locals experienced a kind of shock (Saz, 2020). Even if this event had been on the (national) political and economic agenda for many years, workers and local/regional administrations could not believe that it was really happening (Saz, 2020).

However, the election of the progressive government in 2019 marked a change in the approach taken by the Government in relation to the mining regions in Spain. It represented a turning point for the coal regions due not only to the closure of most mines and thermal power plants but also to the design of a just transition plan for these regions. After the election, the Just Transition Institute, an autonomous body of the Ministry for Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge, was created with the aim of identifying and adopting measures that guarantee fair and supportive treatment for workers and territories affected by the transition to a greener and low-carbon economy, minimising negative impacts on employment and the depopulation of these territories. This agency is actively involved in the transition processes of coal regions. The new institution therefore marks an important difference that contrasts with the perceived abandonment suffered for years in the area. The institution designed a Just Transition Strategy for the Andorra Mining Region, with the aim of minimising the number of jobs lost by the phase-out of the coal sector. This agency is financed partially by the European Commission’s Recovery and Resilience Facility as a post-pandemic recovery package and partially by the annual Spanish government budget. The strategy contemplates the signing of a Just Transition Agreement, negotiated between the Government and the most relevant social actors, which has as priority objectives the maintenance and creation of activity and employment, the settlement of the population in rural territories or in areas with closing facilities, and the promotion of diversification consistent with the socio-economic context. It also takes into account the need to improve employability and working conditions of women and groups with labour market access difficulties, such as the long-term unemployed, youth, people with disabilities or population at risk of exclusion.

In this respect, some positive interactions between top-down and bottom-up policy initiatives seem to have emerged recently from the Just Transition Institute. First, there was the consensus created around the Just Transition Agreement, with an important representation of the most relevant social agents. The priority is local employment, the settlement of the population in rural territories and the promotion of economic diversification. This action was organised around a tender called Nudo Mudéjar, which grants the production rights of the 1200 MW grid capacity that were left free at the connection point after the closure of the plant. This tender incorporated a number of socio-economic criteria, including the creation of green job opportunities and training, the promotion of energy prosumers and energy communities, the generation of municipal income and others. The large company ENDESA was the provisional winner of the tender, with a project that includes the hybridisation of solar and wind renewable projects, energy storage and the development of green hydrogen projects, together with a social plan that foresees the creation of more than 3500 jobs during the construction of the projects, generating 300 direct permanent jobs in the area for the operation of these facilities. This development has a structural transitional capacity, because it will enable the creation of new job positions in research and innovation in a large variety of disciplines. Hence, although it is too early to fully assess to what extent, the introduction of the just transition criteria can help to placate the population, slowing down or reversing the depopulation process in the region, as well as creating job opportunities with a gender perspective and attracting a young and trained population to the region.

There is a general consensus that, according to local stakeholders’ views, the coal industry constituted a key part of the region’s identity. The local population had a strong sense of belonging to a mining community and it was hard for everyone to understand and move forward to another economic sector (Quílez, 2020). For a long time, they viewed coal mining and the thermal plant as an integral part of their identity and a key for their survival (Sanz-Hernández, 2013; Della Bosca & Gillespie, 2018). This was also reflected in the media (Rajadel, 2020) and in the opinion of local experts (Sanz-Hernández, 2013). For instance, an Andorran expert and member of the Aragonese Observatory of Art in the Public Sphere stated that: “Andorra’s social landscape was decisively determined by seventy years of extractive activity (…) and in addition to being an economic engine, coal, after colonising the entrails of men through their lungs and skin, has ended up becoming part of the Andorran identity, which today is collapsing in the face of new environmental policies” (Artigas, 2019).

In this context, the demolition in May 2022 of the cooling towers of the coal-fired plant, after forty years in operation, had a significant emotional effect on the local population, since much of the local identity and tradition was constructed around such an industrial emblem (Fig. 2). This event not only represented a final farewell to a way of life around coal—now perceived to have inevitably ceased to exist—but also highlighted the need to accelerate an entire region’s transformation towards a new economy whose agents of change, content and identity are not yet well defined. Therefore, even if the functionality of the region shaped its identity, at present the sense of belonging corresponds more to the perception of being a former mining region in “transition” towards a new identity or new set of identities not yet well defined. In this process, many stakeholders pointed out the need for public authorities to accompany and support local communities when dealing with the emotional aspects derived from loss, trauma and grief, but also validating hope and providing evidence of alternative futures due to the high level of uncertainty.

A photograph of a large power plant that emits smoke and is located on grassland.

Contradictory feelings and reactions were moreover detected from both qualitative results obtained via interviews and workshops and content analysis of newspapers. On the one hand, the closure of the mines and the plant, and the lack of materialisation of new projects that would support a new “post-coal” regional identity, have created resistance among the population towards the creation of a new project identity, generating feelings of abandonment, nostalgia, resignation, exclusion, etc. In this regard, some representatives from trade unions complained that the phase-out process was too quick in Andorra, and that a minimum coal operational capacity should have been guaranteed for strategic coal reserves (Navarro, 2022), particularly after the start of the Russian-Ukrainian war. On the other hand, growing positive expectations and hope have emerged, particularly thanks to new business models and young entrepreneurs, in relation to engaging in large-scale investments based on renewable energies.

In this regard, Herrfahrdt-Pähle et al. (2020) hypothesised that socio-political shocks may increase opportunities for transformation and argued that research needs to focus on the required capacities to steer such potential tipping point situations towards the desired outcomes (see also Hölscher & Frantzeskaki, 2020). A positive tipping could then also be understood as the moment at which the opportunity space for sustainability transformations actually expands, while a negative one would substantially narrow it. Hence, a regional system’s dynamics would not just follow a linear process of reorienting a single system trajectory towards another of the same system, e.g., following an s-shape1, but rather multiple trajectories and alternative system configurations would potentially unfold, and from this moment the region may be reconfigured towards different plausible forms, many of them being equally valid, equitable and/or sustainable. Figure 3 represents this ‘transformative moment’ at which a tipping event alters the agents’ available degrees of freedom and their patterns of interactions, and in doing so also modifies their opportunity space for transformative futures and their perceived identities. In the new situation, the place-based or single-sector community identity may be replaced by a more fluid set of project-based identities in which individuals also need to decide to whom or to what future project they want to or can belong.

An illustration presents the different stages of the tipping point process. The original system conditions point to the tipping event, then to sustainability transformations opportunity space, tipping point from original to new system conditions. The previous identity is at the bottom.

Therefore, after the tipping event, represented in the case of Teruel by the demolition of the cooling towers, the formation of new representations about individual roles and relationships accelerated. In the new situation, it is plausible that a whole new array of identities appeared in a more fragmented but also potentially networked way. There might no longer be a single and place-based identity formed around a single industry with one unifying heavy infrastructure. On the contrary, a more dynamic set of project identities (in the plural) formed by new agents, entrepreneurs and industries, and possibly also more open to social, economic and cultural diversity, may be emerging. However, we should not expect this to be free of potential resistances as opposition comes not only from those agents that formerly held dominant positions and still intend to retain them, but also from those who perceive their roles and positions as uncertain in the future.

The final closure of the thermal plant and the symbolic impact of the demolition of the towers have made the transition an irreversible process and thus question the legitimacy of coal identities (Sanz-Hernández, 2020). Although there is still some resistance in place, attachment to the coal landscape is being increasingly questioned. Many of the consulted stakeholders have started to manifest a clear will to move forward and accept the irreversibility of the transition. As expressed by a former coal worker at the Second Workshop held in Andorra in June 2022, “I don’t want to talk about coal anymore; I want to talk about the future”.

However, the public debate on how to carry out a just transition is ongoing and the promises of new jobs and development related to the Just Transition Agreement and Nudo Mudéjar play a key role. For instance, a platform very critical of the development of large-scale projects called “Plataforma a favor de los paisajes de Teruel “has been created. They protested against wind and solar farm sprawl under the slogan “Renewables yes, but not like this”. They claimed that the massive deployment of “oversized” renewable energy projects and connection infrastructure requires too much land, destroys the landscape, leads to irreversible loss of biodiversity and hampers sustainable local development. The alternative, the platform proposes, lies in promoting a model based on distributed energy, self-consumption and energy efficiency without jeopardising the local biodiversity and landscape.

Notably, some consulted academics and environmental organisations were amongst the most critical, highlighting the fact that the prospects of the area to become a new green business hub are compromised, unless a significant mental shift in the local population also occurs. These voices claimed that, as the economic bubble of huge salaries and early retirements has ended, the local population should accept that the future of the region also depends on citizens becoming active agents of change, rather than relying on single large companies coming in from abroad. As noted by one of the consulted NGOs, “from now on we must promote entrepreneurship among young people. What is happening is not a misfortune; it is an opportunity to value the capacities that our people already have”.

Our interviews and workshops also revealed some barriers to local entrepreneurship, such as economic risk aversion, a long tradition of being employed by a single big employer and other attitudes not conducive to embracing change, such as “waiting for the job to come from abroad’‘. These factors are compounded with others like the actual lack of a local labour force, youth exodus, bad internet quality and poor offer and opportunities for local re-skilling and training. This is why some stakeholders, because of the considerable future uncertainties, were quite reluctant to start new businesses on their own and pointed out the importance of maintaining a big ‘tractor’ industry or large project capable of pulling other small businesses with it.