More than 4,000 families in Extremadura continue to live in absolute uncertainty. They do not know if their future, linked to the Almaraz nuclear power plant, on which they depend for work, is definitively doomed to failure. They don’t even know if their cities will continue to exist, … as until now, one of the great economic engines of the region where they will be condemned, like so many others, to the ostracism of the most virulent depopulation. The owner companies have formally requested the government for an extension until 2030 and the Executive has transferred this request to the Nuclear Safety Council, which will be the body that will assess the advisability, in terms of safety, of this extension of the useful life. However, the reality, even today, is that The closure schedule is still current and planned for 2027.
Almaraz is the largest industry in Extremadura. He leaves more than 400 million euros in the region every year. The six municipalities with the highest average per capita income in the entire region are municipalities in the nuclear sector. In the region, 43 percent of the population is under 40, a figure significantly higher than the aging regional average. In fact, unemployment is 25 percent lower than in the entire province of Cáceres. In short, it is easy to think that there will be thousands and thousands of Extremadurans, and not only those who directly depend on the CNA, who will take this situation into account when voting on December 21. A recent study, published by the Press Association of Mérida, states that after the strike, infrastructure and landscape, Almaraz will be the fourth voting argument.
A recent study, published by the Press Association of Mérida, states that after the strike, infrastructure and landscape, Almaraz will be the fourth voting argument.
Knowing that the ball was still in the government’s court, the Extremadura PSOE was quick to raise the yes flag at the central office. Your general secretary and candidate, Miguel Ángel Gallardo has assured for months that he will “intercede” so that the Government signs the extension and avoids closure. He was in fact present at the massive demonstration in Almaraz last January. From the start of the pre-campaign, almost in every act, he conveys the idea that this extension “is over”. However, the best demonstration that “it is not done” is that, even saying it a few meters from Pedro Sánchez, the President of the Government did not devote a single word to the industry on which so many families depend.
ABC has already analyzed this “double game” of the government in relation to the future of nuclear power and, more particularly, of Almaraz. The Ministry of Ecological Transition, led by Sara Aagesen, appeals only to the decision of the Nuclear Safety Council, but does not clearly state that it is in favor of the extension. It would be a missile in the waterline of the coalition government itself, directly to the interests and proclamations of Sumar. He is playing with two waters, to try not to irritate Yolanda Díaz’s team, on the one hand, and not to end up destroying the Extremadura candidacy already punished by Gallardo, who broke the party internally and will have to go to the dock for the hiring of Sánchez’s brother to the Foral Deputation of Badajoz.
Gallardo insists on taking for granted an extension which, to date, does not exist
In this sense, while Gallardo insists on taking for granted an extension that, to date, does not exist, the four Extremadura deputies of the PSOE repeatedly vote against the center in the Congress of Deputies. This has already caused the party several scandals at the regional level and, above all, in the municipalities dependent on the CNA. In one of them, Casatejada, the town hall managed to declare the four socialist deputies persona non grata. The most striking thing is that he did it, even with the vote in favor of a PSOE councilor, Nuria Rivera, who left the Municipal Socialist Group this week for not “identifying” with the party, as she denounced in COPE Extremadura: “They don’t allow you to speak clearly or express what you think.“You should always trust what they tell you.”
These cities punished the PSOE in 2023
What happened during the last regional elections of 2023 is the preamble to what could happen on December 21. The PSOE lost votes in eleven of the twelve municipalities in the nuclear sector. The only one who did not reduce his number of votes was Mesas de Ibor, where he obtained exactly the same result as in 2019. In cities like Serrejón (Cáceres), he went from 50 percent of the votes to 25 percent.
The socialists, led then by the recently deceased Guillermo Fernández Vara, lost their strength in the area around Campo Arañuelo when, as yet, the factory issue did not dominate, as it does today, the news and information programs throughout the country. Today, popular concern has materialized in the platform Yes to Almaraz, Yes to the future. It seems predictable that if tension increases in the region, sanctions against the PSOE will also increase.
According to Metroscopia, eight out of ten Extremadura residents are against the closure.
In addition, it must be taken into account that, if these are the first early elections in the history of Extremadura, they are also the first where regional and municipal elections do not go hand in hand. At the municipal level, the PSOE is holding strong in certain town halls, which attenuates its impact at the regional level. The 21-D, this drag factor will not exist.
More wood for PP and Vox
In this context, the situation seems to favor the parties which have been unequivocally in favor of the nuclear power plant. María Guardiola, as President of the Regional Government of Extremadura, has made the continuation of Almaraz her particular crusade in 2025. The Regional Executive has focused on this issue since the beginning of the year. In fact, as a sign of its interest and although it did not accept it at first, the Extremadura government announced that it would gradually reduce the so-called regional ecotax, up to 50 percent.
Vox also displayed a clear position on Almaraz and on several occasions its president, Santiago Abascal, and other members of national weight have visited the municipality itself and its surroundings to demand, without hesitation, the continuity of the main industry of the region.
From December 21, unless there is a major change in the government’s scenario, those who live directly or indirectly from the plant will not know if the closure, planned for 2027, is inevitable or rather the opposite. And this will surely make Almaraz an argument to vote, already knowing that eight out of ten Extremadurians, according to Metroscopia, are against the closure.
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