Activists denounce Israeli miner ICL in Spain and its links to white phosphorus

An activist camp and the documentary ‘Salt in the Wound’ denounce environmental damage by ICL in a Catalan mining basin and its ties to white phosphorus used in warfare in Lebanon. Up to a thousand people gathered between 17 and 19 April at a protest camp against keeping the sodium and potassium salt mines in operation in the Bages county, in the province of Barcelona. The reason? The national and international fallout caused by their owner, Israel Chemicals Ltd. (ICL), whose Iberian branch is known as Iberpotash and which has managed the mines in the municipalities of Sallent, Balsareny, Vilafruns and Súria since their privatisation in 1998. Dozens of long-standing local platforms, such as Montasalat, have for years denounced the pollution generated in this area. Over two decades, the company has piled up mountains of waste that are believed to have leached into the Llobregat, one of the main rivers running through the region, after using tens of thousands of litres of water in an area that suffers recurrent droughts. But the protesters were also mobilising against ICL’s production of white phosphorus, a chemical that ignites instantly when it comes into contact with oxygen and is very hard to extinguish. Prone to sticking to skin and clothing, it causes deep, severe burns, penetrating even through bone. Its use was documented and verified by two human rights organisations on 16 October 2023 in the town of Daraiya, in southern Lebanon, by the Israeli army, as well as in the Gaza Strip. The Palestinian territories – Gaza and the West Bank – have suffered this overlap of war and environmental damage at the hands of Israel since before the historic conflict in the region escalated after the events of 7 October. This has happened, for example, through the diversion of their water resources (according to Amnesty International, the Israeli state-owned company Mekorot has systematically drilled wells since the second half of the 20th century to benefit its settlers and population) and the destruction of their crops. The escalation against Gazans since 2023 has only made matters worse. "In the last two years Israel has produced more greenhouse gases from bombing alone than Spain generates through all its activities," said Mazin Qumsiyeh, director of the Palestinian Institute for Biodiversity and Sustainability, during a lecture in 2025 at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. These two linked developments (the genocide recognised by the UN through an ad hoc commission and the resulting environmental damage in the region) have given rise to a civil resistance movement in the heart of Catalonia, which culminated in the aforementioned gathering in the municipality of Callús. Eight deaths in the last decade and two affected counties According to the Iberian Mining Observatory, these operations have created huge spoil heaps made up mostly of sodium chloride, which, because of rain and humidity, dissolves into a contaminated brine. This seeps into groundwater, polluting springs, streams, wells and rivers in the Llobregat basin, which supplies water to some of the province’s largest cities, including the capital and its south-western metropolitan area. Several trade unions have also lodged complaints and organised strikes over poor working conditions that have led to fatal accidents. As many as eight workers, including miners and geologists, died between 2011 and 2023, mainly due to rockfalls but also accidental falls and crush injuries between the wagons of trains transporting the material. Two of them were students on work placements. The European Commission itself launched infringement proceedings in 2014 against Spain for failing to comply with the EU directive on mineral resources, first to remedy the pollution caused by the spoil heaps and, second, to restore some of the company’s sites through a questionable multimillion-euro injection of public money. Three years later the Commission concluded (source in Spanish) that Spain had granted illegal state aid incompatible with the single market to Iberpotash and ordered the recovery of the amounts unduly received. It is worth noting that the decisions that led to the infringement proceedings were taken between 2006 and 2008, under an agreement between the Catalan regional government (the ‘tripartit’ coalition led by the PSC, the Catalan branch of the PSOE, together with ERC and ICV) and the central government, headed by the Socialists. ICL’s links to the humanitarian crisis in the Middle East Several organisations, including Amnesty International, have highlighted ICL’s connection with the use of white phosphorus munitions against civilians in Lebanon and Gaza at the end of 2023. As can be seen in this public link (source in Spanish) from the US government, ICL secured a contract to supply white phosphorus to the US Army from 2020 until the end of 2025, even though several of its investors, such as Cbus, deny that the company directly manufactures the chemical. The Australian broadcaster ABC contacted ICL (source in Spanish) about this: its executives issued a blanket denial before being asked about the contract. Only then did ICL acknowledge the agreement, while claiming that supplies ended before the date agreed with the US, specifically in 2023. In other words, the year in which the events of 7 October unfolded and the subsequent hostilities in Lebanon, especially in the south. "We wanted to point out and expose the Generalitat’s complicity (...). They are shipping potash from a Zionist company to enrich themselves and continue helping Israel to commit this genocide," said Júlia Martí, spokesperson for Revoltes de la Terra, in a recent interview with the radio production company ‘Carne Cruda’. Concerns about ICL’s activities are nothing new. Back in 2014, a New Zealand Labour MP (David Shearer, defence spokesman and opposition leader for the previous three years) tried to have ICL removed from New Zealand’s sovereign wealth fund amid suspicions over the military use of its products. The initiative, however, did not succeed (source in Spanish). New documentary exposes the plight of residents in Bages and Baix Llobregat The accounts of up to six people affected by this ecological and humanitarian crisis are told in a recent documentary, ‘Sal a la ferida’ (Salt in the Wound), produced by ‘El Salto’ and featuring interviews with local farmers, researchers and activists. Nora Miralles, a researcher with the Observatori Drets Humans i Empreses platform and quoted by ‘elDiario.es’, says that the white phosphorus does not remain in the United States and that another US company is responsible for reselling it to the Israeli army. During the camp in Bages, participants organised activities such as talks and workshops. Some also carried out direct actions, such as climbing the chemical waste tips or dismantling sections of the railway line that transports material from the Súria mine to the port of Barcelona. The 2018 restoration plan for the Sallent and Balsareny-Vilafruns sites, which closed two years later, allows for a maximum period of 50 years to extract and sell the salt from the spoil heaps, but restoration is only envisaged once this period has elapsed. It is estimated that the El Cogulló spoil heap alone stores more than 40 million tonnes of waste. Current activity is concentrated in the town of Súria, at the Cabanasses mine.