News on the human shields against the High Speed Train

This is the continuation of the info I posted last week on four activists entering abandoned mines with the intention of becoming human shields against the destructive, undemocratic, useless and extremely costly Basque High Speed Train, that is being built in the Western Basque Country.

The information was not being actualized properly at the AHT Gelditu site, I think (at least not when I checked), but now there are several news items.

I now reckon that the people giving the press release, some of which I identified, were not the same ones going to the mines.

Whatever the case, the news are:

The Government and its companies have continued work as if nothing happened. Explosions continued on thrusday and friday and it's reported that the activists felt rocks falling, though they are alive so far. This criminal attitude triggered that a legal denounce has been placed at court.

Two of the activists chained to each other through a cement filled barrel to make forced evacuation more difficult.

Another problem they are reporting is that the mines have high humidity levels, what makes their stance very uncomfortable and unhealthy. In fact unspecified health problems have been reported.

Demo in Ordizia.
The banner reads: 'Through disobedience until the High Speed Train (AHT) is stopped. Resistance in the mines of Itsasondo'.

There was an important demonstration at Ordizia on Saturday (photo above).

As police did absolutely nothing, the AHT Gelditu platform sent a group to check for the situation of the activists, which are alive but with the important caveats mentioned above that imply serious danger for their lives and health.

Contact group wading through the mine galleries

Finally today, police has shown up at the site and it is speculated that their intention is to take them out.

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Update (July 6): the four activists were finally expelled from the mines yesterday evening, reports Gara. After passing through the health center, they were arrested and charged with "public disorder, resistance and disobedience to authority".

Risking their lives to stop the High Speed Train

Four people have become human shields to stop the Basque High Speed Train (AHT-TAV) work. The four ecologists have entered an abandoned mine at Itsasondo in the Gipuzkoan highlands near where the development companies are carrying on prospections by means of continuous explosions, which could destroy the old mine nearby at any time.


Above: the four nonviolent activists at the press conference where they announced their action. I am quite sure. in spite of the low quality of the pic and the lack of names in the source, I know personally one of them (Jaxo, the second from the right) and probably all four. No big surprise: this is a really small country. Guess I'll feel emotionally obligued to go to demo this Sunday.

And sure: I feel even more worried.


The High Speed Train is a waste

Not only it is enviromentally hostile, it is a total waste: a bottomless pit for public money and a relevant factor in the public deficit that so problematic has become.

It is not me who says that, it is a big business speaker: the president of the Spanish Association of Spanish Concessions of Highways, Tunnels, Bridges and Toll Roads (ASETA), José Luis Feito declared yesterday at a major university that this type of train is useless for the low population density and rugged orography of Spain, that the existing trains (between Seville, Madrid and Barcelona) can't pay even the 30% of the costs. To offset this, he admits, the ticket price would have to be at least tripled but that would mean that nearly nobody would use them.

He instead proposes to build freight railroads, which are almost non-existent in Spain, what means that most cargo traffic goes by road, crippling them.

He acknowledged that the high speed trains in Spain are one of the causes of the growing public deficit and proposed that something will have to be done about it.


5000 euros of debt to every Western Basque

The Basque High Speed Train is projected to cost 4900 euros to each Western Basque citizen. And as the Spanish government has, in an unprecedented act of pragmatism, removed its support for the Basque HST, that means we are going to have to pay that in full (Southern Basque territories are semi-autonomous in tax collection and allocation - it has been that way since the Castilian invasions of 1199 and 1512, except partially for the fascist interlude).

For that reason there is now a campaign going on to stamp or write down on the bank notes a short message denouncing the unduly high cost that the HST is having for us. This major financial argument may possibly persuade the indifferent after all because everybody knows how hard is to gather those 4900 euros.

The brutal cost of the Basque High Speed Train

The Basque High Speed Train (known as AHT-TAV by its Basque and Spanish language name) is already an old project that has been forged and imposed slowly by the Western Basque and Navarrese autonomous administrations in the name of modernity and progress, bypassing the nearly total rejection of rural inhabitants (the main losers: the train will not stop in their towns and will severely disrupt their enviroment and local communications) and many concerned urban ones.

Now is the time when this pharaonic project actually begins to be built and the platform AHT Gelditu! (High Speed Train Stop!) has distributed by some 800,000 homes a fake mail by the Basque and Navarrese governments in which it was explained the immense cost (6.34 billion euros) and the fact that the authorities have no budgetary capability to pay for it. The prank claimed that it would be paid instead by increasing the income tax by 30% and similar draconian measures for all. This last extreme is not clear but the question on how we Basque citizens are going to pay for this elitist pharaonic bullet train is at the moment unanswered.

Surely some will make a lot of profit from it: all those construction companies with many a corrupt link within the power circles will make good money. The corrupt officers in charge, no matter of what party, will also fill their pockets secretly and we will have to pay the bill. How? That is not really clear.

Sources: Gara and AHT Gelditu!
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