
Energy Aftermath
Barruelo de Santullán, Castile Leon
Period: 2025 - present
The town of Barruelo de Santullán, located in the north of the Castilian-Leonese province of Palencia, is one of the 184 municipalities affected by the decarbonisation processes that the MITECO (Ministry of Ecological Transition and Demographic Challenge) has been carrying out over the last few years throughout Spain. This public policy is carried out with the aim of moving towards a green and low-carbon economy, in order to minimise the negative economic and social impacts caused by the process of abandoning polluting industries.
During the heyday of coal mining, approximately 12,000 people lived in Barruelo de Santullán, linked in one way or another to the mining industry. Now there are only 1,200 people living there, most of them retired from the mining industry and their families, who are trying to adapt to a territory with too many empty houses in a state of abandonment, despite having a significant housing problem. Some of them want to understand what material and immaterial legacy their ancestors left them, in order to leave those who succeed them something they can use to avoid repeating the dynamics and mistakes of the past. And they want to do so on the basis of the concepts of socio-environmental reparation, spatial and territorial justice, rethinking what is required to live in a territory where coal mining has been replaced by work in the biscuit industry in the nearby town of Aguilar de Campoo.