Santiago de Compostela, 9 July 2025
In the only face-to-face meeting that I have had with Pavasal regarding their re-opening of the disused Penya Negra quarry (see previous posts), the one concession that was asked of me – by Pavasal’s PR guru Juan Ivars of Omnicom Valencia – was that I should take down any references to the patrician Catholic Quesada family who own Pavasal. My mention of them on my blog was unhelpful to further discussions.
I obliged – although I was offered nothing in return – and I removed the references . It showed how sensitive was the mention of the Catholic credentials of the owners of Pavasal. I had simply mentioned the Quesada family funding of events at the Catholic University of Valencia on topics such as “business ethics” (!) But that was too sensitive, apparently.
The further discussions that were promised by Pavasal have not materialised. In fact, in a short and rather brusque email to me, the head of Pavasal in Alicante Enrique Cabañeros wrote: “Queremos insistir en nuestra predisposición al diálogo con todos los vecinos que de buena fe quieran interesarse sobre el proyecto.” (We want to insist on our willingness to engage in dialogue with all neighbours who in good faith want to be interested in the project.) “Good faith” is quite difficult when we were promised by Pavasal before buying property that the quarry would never re-open; and when permissions were arranged in secret by Pavasal with the Consellería de Industria, with no public consultation. We are merely invited to be “interested in the project”? Dynamite at 150 metres from my donkeys, living on a registered and licensed agricultural farm, and I am supposed to express “interest in the project”? Property values suddenly reduced and the property unsellable, so there is no possibility of re-locating, but I can “dialogue in good faith”?
So the question of “faith” has been brought up by Señor Cabañeros, and that is quite handy, so I shall return to the question of the Catholic faith of the Quesada family. Sorry if that is embarrassing, but we need to have this conversation. Maybe the Quesada family can respond directly, instead of leaving it to the PR guys from Omnicom to do their greenwashing for them?
As a Catholic and a regular writer for Where Peter Is, I am philosophically and practically motivated in my faith by the rich output of Catholic social teaching in recent times. Particularly Pope Francis’s encyclical Laudato Si’ (2015). But since my very existence – and that of my donkeys – is now directly threatened by Pavasal’s environmental vandalism next to my home, I am also aware of the need for solidarity with those threatened by “extractivist paradigms” and corporate greed – putting profit before life – in other parts of the world. Pavasal: you have made me a climate activist, and I reject the false solutions of the commodification of nature. So I stand squarely with the new document issued on 1st July 2025 by the Catholic Episcopal Conferences preparing for COP 30 in Belém, Brazil starting 10 November 2025.
Today I have visited O Cebreiro on the Camino de Santiago – where many years ago the parish priest Don Elias Valiña began the project of painting the yellow arrows to mark the Camino de Santiago – and I put some of my thoughts on these matters into a short video:
Then I made a second video in the Praza do Obradoiro in Santiago de Compostela, which is considered the centre of Spanish Catholicism – the home of the Patron Saint of Spain, Saint James:
This blog post is the start of a more concerted campaign to challenge this example of “greenwashing” by the Quesada family and Pavasal, and draw you into discussion of Catholic social teaching.
Consider it merely “setting out the stall”. The detail will follow, particularly the debunking of the Pavasal and Omnicom 15-year plan to “restore” the Penya Negra quarry to an environmentally-repaired zone, when the real plan is for profit-making extraction that will further destroy an EU-protected environment that Pavasal left irresponsibly damaged for many years of unmanaged disuse, where constant rockfalls have been observed, as reported in my earlier post. This company and this Catholic family which trades on its faith to promote its moral superiority must be held to account, and we will do that by reminding them of the true social teaching of the Catholic church.
#BurritosDeLaCantera #PavasalRefugees #StopCanteraOrxeta