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The legacy we will be
Past, present and future
The beach of As pontes is located on the old mine sinkhole.
I was a teenager the first time I travelled from Madrid to As Pontes. My love of canoeing took me there, to compete in a Spanish Cup that was held in the reservoir of A Ribeira. Years later, while studying the last courses of Mining Engineering, I had to work in a company and I managed to get a scholarship in a mine that had a canoeing club nearby. And that's how As Pontes came back into my life.
The first time I toured the mine I felt overwhelmed by the sheer size of it, 2,400 hectares between mine and dump, so the first few weeks I was continuously lost among the tangle of tracks, tapes and machines that made up the mine. At that time I knew nothing about the site or its origin, a lagoon that was filled with plant and detrital material 21 million years ago, nor did I know anything about the plans that were being prepared for when the coal mining ended.
On a professional level, I took my first steps in the areas of hydrogeology and geotechnics, but over time I became involved in the project to fill the mining hole, whose final objective was to integrate the excavated land back into the natural environment, turning the huge hole into a lake more than twice the size of Lake Sanabria. The entire process of planning and executing the closure works took almost 15 years, from the end of the 90s until 2012, when the filling that was started in 2008 ended.
My children never saw the mine during the mining phase, and for them it's a lake where we spend many hours in summer and in which they sometimes see me with my canoe, but I try to convey to them the importance that the As Pontes mine had for economic and social development during the more than 60 years in which coal was mined from it. I think I've gotten them to understand that although there are now more sustainable ways to produce electricity, coal was the fuel of the technological revolution that enabled the progress we now enjoy.
Centuries or millennia
One of the things that I find most curious about the work carried out in the mine is that a large part of those who participated were not aware of how special they were, handling machines that could only be found here (bucket-wheel excavators and stackers over 40 m high), nor that the result of their effort will last for centuries or millennia. Regarding the latter, I think it is something we can be proud of, sinceit managed to offset in large part for the environmental impact produced, generating wealth for society along the way.
The whole process of restoring the land affected by mining began in the 80s. At that time, the management of the mine considered that it was necessary to integrate the restoration of the outer dump, where the sterile extracted from the mine was deposited, into the production process. What seems obvious to us right now was not evident back then. It's obvious: the sooner things start and the more they are planned, the better they tend to come out. Thus, a methodical revegetation was initiated, integrating it into coal mining with the aim of creating conditions that would allow vegetation to grow and favour the arrival of animals (deer, foxes, wolves, wild boars, roe deer, otters, hares, rabbits, storks, etc.), without it being necessary to carry out a repopulation.
“A methodical revegetation of the outer dump was initiated that favoured the arrival of animals (deer, foxes, wolves, wild boars, roe deer, otters, hares, rabbits, storks, etc.), without it being necessary to carry out a repopulation”.
239 species of vertebrate
The outer dump is currently a huge mountain, the height of a 45-storey building, about 200 metres away from the lakeshore. The revegetation of the wastelands was completed in 2006, giving rise to 1,200 hectares of meadows, scrub areas, wooded areas and small ponds; varied habitats that, together with the lake, have naturally attracted more than 239 species of vertebrates.
Returning to the lake, public access to the beach opened in 2012. It was a very strange day for me, because on the one hand I was glad that people could finally enjoy our work, but on the other hand we stopped being able to control what happened and ended a very important stage in my life. In addition to the beach, shallow areas, islands and three waterfalls were also built on the lake. The shallow areas and islands were built to favour the spawning of fish and colonisation by aquatic plants, while waterfalls connect the lake with three basins that were diverted at the time to enable mining.
All phases of the filling project were very delicate: the planning, obtaining the permits, the execution of the preparatory works and, of course, the derivation of the Eume River, which is one of the largest rivers and of greatest natural value in Galicia. As for water management, it was not only a question of opening the floodgates and letting the waters circulate; it was necessary to carry out an exhaustive control of all the canals derived from the mining hole, especially on stormy days when overflows occurred. So, we spent many hours touring the canals in the rain, and although I wasn't happy about getting soaking wet at the time, I now remember it very fondly.
Today, among the forests and meadows of what was once the dump of the As Pontes mine, lorries carrying coal debris have given way to a rich ecosystem of native fauna and flora.
Throughout the rehabilitation project, expensive decisions were made, without knowing whether they would achieve the environmental objective set, but it was considered that the risk was worth it, and the result is that there are many mining lakes and dumps in the world, but very few have the chemical quality of the waters of Lake As Pontes and the biodiversity of the outer dump. Perhaps risking a mistake has been the secret of success. My children enjoy the lake, as will many generations to come. I'm sure that As Pontes will soon be better known for its lake than for the thermal power plant and mine.
“I'm sure that As Pontes will soon be better known for its lake than for the thermal power plant and mine”.
José Antonio Menéndez Lolo
Endesa's Institutional Relations in the Northwest sector.
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The legacy we will be
The legacy that we will be is a reflection of the just energy transition in Spain through its protagonists.
It's a project sponsored by Endesa created by the documentary photographer Álvaro Ybarra Zavala. Álvaro is witnessing our process of change, telling the stories of the real protagonists of this change through his photographs.
Manuel Vila Vidal
Manuel Vila Vidal (1928-2013) could not be anything but a photographer. Because he was the son of the first portraitist that As Pontes had and because, despite how expensive photographic material was in the 30s, as a child he was allowed to tinker with the equipment with which his father earned his living. That's how he got used to seeing the world from the other side of a camera.
However, Manuel Vila also had a permanent job, which gave his family security: he worked at the Empresa Nacional Calvo Sotelo from 1943, and was later transferred to Endesa, in whose laboratory he worked until he retired in 1988. During his tenure at both companies, he did what he did best: watch his co-workers through a viewfinder. That passion for photography made him the graphic memory of the mining-electrical work that was done at As Pontes, taking around 15,000 photos. Franco or Juan Carlos, a miner or a plant operator, a labourer or an industrial engineer: the photos of Vila has it all. For history.