Last March, the Spanish socialist party (PSOE) won the country’s general election. The PSOE's electoral programme included the commitment to a nuclear phase-out (literally: “we keep our commitment of gradually replacing nuclear energy by clean, safe and less costly energies, closing down the existing nuclear reactors...”.

The President of the Government, Zapatero, is still publicly saying no to nukes but his Minister of Energy (Miguel Sebastian), a pro-nuclear man, is saying that “although there are going to be no new nukes in Spain, it doesn't mean that existing reactors are going to be closed down”.

But the President and his Government will have to take a key decision on nuclear matters soon.

July 2009 sees the end of the operation license of Garoña NPP, a 38 year-old 461 MW GE BWR reactor. Nuclenor, the plant owner (jointly owned by Spain’s electricity utilities Endesa and Iberdrola), has applied for a ten-year Plant Lifetime Extensions or PLEX. Minister Sebastian seems to be in favour of granting this PLEX.

Greenpeace Spain are concentrating our campaign efforts in forcing the Government to fulfil its phase-out commitment and to take the political decision of closing immediately the Garoña NPP in July 2009 - at the latest - as the first step to phase-out of nuclear energy in Spain.

As a part of our work we have recently launched the “I’m an antinuclear” campaign. It pretends to be a reference for the anti-nuclear majority of the Spanish people and collects their signatures (mainly via the internet, by means of a register on the web page www.yosoyantinuclear.org), promotes social mobilization (also via the internet as much as possible: promoting cyberactivism, videocyberactivism, and encouraging people through social networks like Facebook, MySpace, Tuenti…), and creates a common place for other antinuclear groups to join actions and share activities. In summary: to put pressure on the Government to fulfil his commitment of phasing out nuclear energy.

We have also made available a lot of awareness-raising materials, including a report: “An energy without future. Deconstructing the lies of the nuclear industry (the document in Spanish is here).

(This is a guest post by Isabel Rivera, press officer for Greenpeace Spain’s nuclear campaign.)