RESIDENTS across the Campo de Gibraltar have been left furious after a petrochemical plant belched towering flames and thick black smoke into the sky this week.
The dramatic scenes at the Moeve energy park on Tuesday lit up the evening sky across San Roque, La Linea, Algeciras and Los Barrios, prompting worried locals to flood social media with videos of the incident.
Although the flaring began around 1pm, witnesses said it looked most frightening after dark when the flames created a glow visible for miles around.
When contacted by Area Campo de Gibraltar, Moeve – formerly known as Cepsa – admitted the fiery display was due to a faulty gas network compressor at their San Roque complex.
“We had a fault in a gas network compressor at the energy park. During the repair and restart process, the flare height may vary at certain moments,” the company explained.
These flaring episodes are routine safety measures to relieve pressure on the system, but the scale of it on this occasion is what frightened locals – who aren’t buying it.
Many are demanding answers about what they see as increasingly frequent industrial incidents in an area nicknamed ‘toxic town’ due to its heavy concentration of polluting industries.
This isn’t the first time the industrial zone has sparked fear.
Just two months ago, the Olive Press exposed how a ‘sinister cloud of orange gas’ from the nearby Acerinox steelworks had enveloped the Bay of Gibraltar.
“Everyone who works remains silent for fear of losing their jobs,” a former Acerinox employee told this newspaper at the time.
“More than half the population of the surrounding areas work there or have a family member working for them directly or indirectly and they fear for their jobs.”
The industrial sprawl across Campo de Gibraltar – which includes Moeve, Acerinox and an Endesa power plant – employs thousands in a region where jobs are hard to come by.
This economic reality hasn’t stopped some locals speaking out.
Paco Cervantes, 66, told the Olive Press in March: “The Campo de Gibraltar has the highest levels of cancer, bronchitis and asthma in all of Spain – we are top of the cancer list. Here people die of cancer.”
Another resident, Fernando Martin Delgado, 56, didn’t mince his words about the industrial complex: “We see black smoke from the Cepsa plant all the time, if anything it’s getting worse.”
Environmental watchdog Verdemar Ecologistas en Accion has repeatedly claimed air quality monitors are conveniently ‘turned off at night’ – precisely when most noxious emissions allegedly occur.
