Teruel Existe has presented in the Cortes of Aragon a Non-Binding Proposition (PNL) with which it urges the regional government to intervene immediately to stop the demolition of the Escucha thermal power plant and to promote its heritage protection, initiating without delay a file for its declaration as an Asset of Cultural Interest (BIC).
The spokesperson for Teruel Existe, Tomás Guitarte, has underlined that the thermal power plant constitutes "one of the most relevant elements of Aragonese industrial heritage and a symbol of the mining and energy history of the Mining Basins". Built in 1970 and linked for decades to the exploitation of lignite in the region, the plant embodies the coal-electricity binomial that sustained the economic and social progress of large areas of the province of Teruel.
Therefore, Guitarte has expressed his opposition to the recently authorized demolition plan and has insisted on the importance of conserving a facility that is part of the collective memory of the area. "We cannot allow the mistake made five years ago in Andorra to be repeated. The Escucha thermal power plant is like the cathedral of coal, an element of industrial, cultural, and historical heritage of the highest order, and one of the few great elements that remain of the heritage and mining past of the province, along with the Aliaga thermal power plant," he pointed out.
The registered proposal calls on the Aragonese Executive to adopt all the necessary legal and technical measures to prevent the disappearance of the complex and to initiate ex officio, through the Directorate General of Culture and Cultural Heritage, the file for its declaration as an Asset of Cultural Interest. It also recalls that the Law on Aragonese Cultural Heritage establishes that, from the moment this procedure is opened, precautionary protection measures are automatically activated, including the suspension of actions that may affect the asset.
Likewise, Teruel Existe highlights that the General Urban Planning Plan of Escucha already includes the thermal power plant in its Catalogue of Cultural Heritage, granting it a structural protection level that requires the conservation of its fundamental architectural elements and only allows total demolition in cases of legal or technical ruin.
"It is necessary to negotiate and reach an agreement to provisionally halt the demolition announced by the company and design a project that gives a second life to the plant, that turns it into a development resource for Escucha, for the Cuencas Mineras region, and for the province of Teruel," Guitarte concluded.