Welcome to the most technologically-advanced village in Spain: It doesn’t have high-speed internet, but there’s a uranium plant

In Spain’s most technologically-advanced village, there are no flying cars or humanoid robots. The mayor plays a Baroque lute. High-speed internet has yet to arrive. Its streets and stone walls – deserted on a recent May afternoon – are decorated with bronze plaques whose inscribed verses are recited by the authors themselves.

A decade ago, here in Juzbado – in the province of Salamanca – the poet Antonio Gamoneda read from one of his works: “There’s black grass on the slopes and purple lilies among the shadows… but what am I doing standing before the abyss?”

A rooster’s cock-a-doodle-doo and a stork’s croaking are the only sounds that can be heard on the streets. However, the Technological Employment Map of Spain, prepared by the Cotec Foundation, indicates that this peaceful community of 189 inhabitants is the Spanish municipality with the highest percentage of workers in the technology sector: more than 91%. So where are they?

The musicologist Fernando Rubio has been winning local elections for almost two decades. He recalls that when he first took office as mayor, he began receiving confusing calls at City Hall.

“Hello, I’m calling from Juzbado.”

“No you’re not, you’re calling from the factory,” he would reply. “I’m in Juzbado."

Rubio is referring to Spain’s only uranium plant, a double-fenced bunker opened in 1985 by the National Uranium Company (ENUSA). It’s located just under two miles from the village center. The facility, which employs 381 workers, has twice the population of the municipality. So, little by little, it also took on the name “Juzbado.”

The hustle and bustle of the factory, which even has night shifts, contrasts with the peaceful tranquility of the village. The factory supplies uranium to around 20 nuclear power plants across Spain, France, Belgium, Switzerland, Sweden and Finland. Around 17% of the electricity in Spanish homes, as well as the energy of tens of millions of Europeans, depends on the fuel pellets that are processed on the outskirts of this tiny location in Salamanca province.

The newspaper archives kept by EL PAÍS reflect the protests that the project sparked in its early days. “Many towns don’t want the factory,” proclaimed the then-mayor, back in 1980. The journalist described Juzbado as “a town without asphalt and without unemployment,” where residents lived “off their own land and their few heads of cattle.” There were fears of “genetic mutations in human beings.” Hundreds of people demonstrated in front of the barbed wire fence.

Today, after 40 years of operation, there are no reports of serious safety problems or radioactive emissions… but the annual drills are a reminder that this isn’t just any ordinary factory. Three years ago, workers rehearsed what to do in the event of a terrorist attack. The scenario was a supposed act of arson, to divert attention from the placement of a bomb.

ENUSA is a public company; 60% is owned by the State Industrial Holdings Company (SEPI), which is part of the Ministry of Finance. The remaining 40% is controlled by the Center for Energy, Environmental and Technological Research (CIEMAT), part of the Ministry of Science. Its annual turnover is around €300 million ($341 million). The 10 residents surveyed by EL PAÍS believe that this lucrative uranium monoculture, which has been growing for decades, should have contributed more to Juzbado’s development. “We don’t have high-speed internet; we’ll have it by the end of the year, because the State Secretariat for Telecommunications is implementing universal broadband. Right now, we have fairly mediocre internet, it’s patchy,” laments the mayor, a member of the ruling Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE).

Fernando Rubio – a specialist in Baroque and Renaissance music – teaches at the University of Salamanca, but lives with his family in Juzbado, on a cliff with impressive views of the Tormes River. Ironically, as the mayor of Spain’s most technologically-advanced municipality, as soon as he took office he embraced poetry. Every year, since 2008, the best Spanish-language poets have come to this community to recite their verses, which are then engraved on bronze plaques. “Since you’re not safe from anything, try to be the salvation of something,” proclaimed the Uruguayan poet Ida Vitale, winner of the Miguel de Cervantes Prize. “The pigeons coo in their nests. And, in the distance a bell can be heard – a small heartbeat that calls on us to live close to the mystery,” recited Francisca Aguirre, who won the 2018 National Prize for Spanish Literature.

The mayor strolls through the narrow streets filled with engraved verses, until he reaches the town’s only bar, El Toral, run by Lourdes García. An 84-year-old man, Benedicto Martín, comes in and orders a glass of wine. He explains that he worked half his life in “la nuclear,” as they used to call it. Another local resident, 71, orders a glass of beer. His name is Antonio Ruiz, “like the bullfighter [nicknamed] Espartaco.” He participated in the construction of the factory and then stayed on, processing uranium fuel pellets until his retirement.

No one at the bar can accept the fact that Juzbado is the Spanish municipality with the highest percentage of workers in the technology sector.

“They’re not people from Juzbado; we’re the same old people here,” Ruiz scoffs. There’s bitterness in his voice, because his son hasn’t found a job at the factory. Everyone in the village knows everyone else, yet the mayor and the locals can barely name 15 people who live in Juzbado and also work at the uranium factory.

Entering the factory isn’t easy. This newspaper requested a visit from ENUSA on April 7, following the publication of the report that ranked Juzbado as the most technologically-advanced municipality in Spain. After a few weeks, the publicly-owned company proposed May 13 as the date of a visit. During this waiting period, the mysterious massive blackout of April 28 placed uranium at the center of the political debate, with the right-wing Popular Party and far-right Vox demanding that the government extend the useful life of Spain’s seven nuclear reactors. The phased closure of these facilities is scheduled between 2027 and 2035.

Two weeks ago, in the Congress of Deputies, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, of the PSOE, proclaimed: “There’s a lot of talk about nuclear power plants, but little talk about the fact that there’s no uranium in Spain. Therefore, we’ll have to import it. Where will it come from?”

The PP immediately responded on social media: “We have more uranium than Pedro Sánchez is [aware] of,” referring to the reserves of more than 34,000 tons of low-quality uranium found in the Spanish subsoil – particularly in Salamanca – according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA).

Hours later, Sánchez made a clarification: “The uranium deposits that exist in Spain stopped being exploited decades ago because they were absolutely unviable from an economic point of view, [while also being] highly-polluting.” ENUSA closed its last uranium mine in 2000, during the right-wing administration of Prime Minister José María Aznar, of the PP (1996-2004). The public company has spent more than $120 million on the environmental restoration of that mine, in Saelices el Chico, another municipality in the province of Salamanca.

The Juzbado-based plant is primarily dedicated to converting uranium oxide powder – which is purchased from other countries, primarily Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Namibia, Russia, Niger and Canada – into fuel pellets. Each pellet – less than half-an-inch in diameter – generates the same amount of energy as a ton of coal, enough to last a family for a year.

Pablo Vega, the facility’s director, sat down with EL PAÍS in a meeting room. According to his figures, 23 of his workers (6%) are linked to Juzbado, either by birth or residence. “As a public company, I can’t say: ‘I’ll [hire] people from this town.’ If a position opens up, anyone can apply under equal conditions,” he argues.

Cotec’s Technological Employment Map analyzes Social Security affiliation data in all of Spain’s municipalities. Juzbado has 411 employees, with 375 of them dedicated to technological activities. Most of the facility’s employees, however, live in the city of Salamanca, about 15 miles away. Buses make the trip every day. “Having a factory in the municipality clearly represents an opportunity for young people and [guarantees] a stable population. And, logically, local authorities benefit from the taxes,” says Vega, a 51-year-old industrial engineer originally from Zamora who now lives in Salamanca.

The mayor has outlined the impact of the factory on the town. ENUSA owns more than 1,500 acres – almost 40% of the land – as well as heritage properties across the municipality. The City Council owns only 1%. The council receives about $250,000 each year from ENUSA, primarily from property and business taxes, which represents a third of its total income. The salary of the president of ENUSA alone, however, exceeds €245,000 – or $278,000 – annually. The position has been held for three years by Mariano Moreno, the former director-general of the PSOE’s Federal Executive Commission.

The Juzbado plant, as Vega emphasizes, is classified as “a strategic facility” for the European Union. There are only three other similar facilities: in Lingen (Germany), Västerås (Sweden) and Romans-sur-Isère (France). The director’s mission is to continue producing uranium after the Spanish nuclear reactors shut down in 2035. The plant already exports 65% of its production. And ENUSA has signed an agreement with an American company, Westinghouse, to manufacture fuel for the Russian-designed VVER reactors in Europe. Juzbado will help Finland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Bulgaria avoid dependence on the autocratic Vladimir Putin.

Mayor Rubio, a leader in his party’s fight against depopulation, has reflected extensively on the slow death of towns, many of which have been condemned to accept mega-farms that deliver the final blow with their foul odors. “[The autonomous community of] Castilla y León has the sad honor of having seven of the ten regions in all of Spain that are at extreme risk of depopulation. In [the province of] Salamanca, we have three: Campo Charro, Vitigudino and Ledesma. We have a practically desert-like population density,” he sighs.

“One of the big problems,” Rubio continues, “is that rural areas have lost their self-esteem. It’s in the fatalism of a predetermined destiny: ‘we’re going to empty out.’ We need to radically change that dynamic,” he argues. “There are [clichés] that the vast majority of politicians in this country use, such as that there must be jobs and infrastructure [to repopulate empty Spain]. But the better your job, the more likely you are to leave [your hometown]. And fixing the roads has essentially served to encourage people to flee. It’s essential to have jobs and roads, but that’s no longer enough. Nobody is going to go live somewhere because they have a job right next door [to their house] if they’re going to rot in the afternoon, with absolutely nothing to do. Cultural development is needed,” he proclaims. “We’re vibrant people.”

One of the poems engraved on the walls of Juzbado speaks about the precision of language. “Expectant words, fabulous in themselves, promises of possible meanings (...) a brief error turns them ornamental. Their indescribable precision erases us,” recited Ida Vitale. Juzbado may be the most technologically-advanced town in Spain thanks to the uranium plant that sits on its outskirts, but this Cervantes Prize winner searched for – and found – another adjective: “I am enraptured; I have discovered a divine town.”

Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition