Oil-drilling demonstrations fill Castellón, Palma and Ibiza
Sunday, February 23, 2014 @ 8:57 PM
PROTESTERS from all over Valencia, the Costa Blanca and the Balearic Islands took to the streets yesterday (Saturday) to publicly condemn plans to drill for oil in the Mediterranean between the two regions.
Around 20,000 people turned out – 3,000 in Palma de Mallorca, 12,000 in Ibiza town and 5,000 in Castellón, north of the Valencia region.
Coaches were thrown on in Dénia, Jávea, Calpe, Benissa and Teulada (Alicante province) and Gandia (Valencia province) to travel to Castellón to join the march.
Town councils, residents, fishermen, business-owners and employees in all areas of the tourism industry, environmental groups and water sports associations and clubs have all stated they are against plans by Cairn Energy to extract oil from below the sea-bed between the Balearics and the Gulf of Valencia.
Even Jávea-born tennis ace David Ferrer has supported his town's campaign against the fracking.
Representatives of all political parties joined in and the PP vice-mayoress of Castellón city hall, Marta Gallén, said the previous national government, that of then socialist leader José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero was the one which paved the way for the fracking plans by passing two Bills of Law allowing it to take place off the coast of the Valencia region, which Castellón's PP party was against back then, and still is even though the national government has changed to a PP-led cabinet which is continuing to take the move forward.
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