- Sara Ibáñez is one of the spokesmen of the Meatzaldea Bizirik group, a platform that opposes the Petronor coke plant in Gipuzkoa. Interviewed by Hor Dago-El Salto, he narrates what he has suffered in his flesh to have the refinery by his side for 35 years.
Ibáñez, who had been retired for three years, worked in a family planning centre in the Vizcain town of Ortuella (Bizkaia). Petronor's activity began to militate in social movements and feminism and became immersed in environmentalism.
As he explained, at first they assumed that a refinery would comply with all the safety measures and was controlled, "but Petronor started to doubt when I had two abortions, one in 1992, the midwife told me that all the women who were pregnant we aborted at once. The causal effect cannot be found, but after 35 years controlling the health of the women in the region, I have always had the suspicion, and the data, that we have more health problems."
The member of Meatzaldea Activa has also told him how Petronor's accidents have affected him throughout his life, due to the trauma suffered by his daughter as a result of an explosion in 2002.
Asked why women are at the forefront of this struggle, he pointed out that it has been something "spontaneous", without pretensions of prominence. However, he has denounced that Petronor performs selective contracts in the region between men and young people to "deactivate the demonstrations against".