Of the 47 strategic projects selected by the European Commission in thirteen of its member states to ensure and diversify access to raw materials in the European Union, seven projects belong to Spain. Four are classified as extraction projects, two are integrated projects involving both extraction and processing, and one is categorized under recycling, in line with the objective of the Critical Raw Materials Act (CRMA) to meet the EU’s demand for raw materials by 2030.
Spain has been the second country with the most awarded projects, only behind France, which has nine of the forty-seven selected, demonstrating the great potential of Spanish mining. Of the seven chosen projects in our country, one is located in Galicia, three in Extremadura, two in Andalusia, and one in Castilla-La Mancha, distributed as follows:
In Galicia, there is the Doade mine (Ourense). The project involves the construction of an underground mine and a treatment plant for minerals extracted from the subsoil that contain lithium. Another lithium extraction mine is the Las Navas deposit in an old mining area of rural Cañaveral (Cáceres), which operated until the 1970s and currently houses one of the most important lithium reserves in the EU. Also in Cáceres is the La Parrilla mine, which will be dedicated to both extraction and processing of tungsten.
The Aguablanca project will be aimed at the extraction of cobalt, nickel, copper, and platinum, and seeks to reopen and utilize the old nickel and copper mine located in Monesterio, Badajoz.
In Andalusia, there are two projects. One is the PMR (Poly Metallurgical Refinery) Las Cruces project, which is integrated and encompasses both extraction and processing. An underground mine will be developed to exploit a new polymetallic deposit, and the first polymetallic refinery of its kind in the world will be built, capable of producing copper, zinc, lead, and silver.
The other project, located in Huelva, is the only one that does not involve mining but rather consists of “a highly efficient plant with the capacity to process about 60,000 tons per year of non-ferrous metal fractions from discarded electrical and electronic equipment (WEEE), which have already been pre-treated by authorized managers.” Materials such as copper, gold, silver, platinum, or palladium can be recovered, and “it is expected to be operational in the first quarter of 2026.”
Finally, in Castilla-La Mancha, the El Moto mine in Ciudad Real has been selected, which is one of the largest tungsten and gold deposits in Europe.
