Environmentally Blind Discourses on Coal Extraction and the Idealization of the Miner in Spain

The Spanish public gave enthusiastic support to coal miners' protests that ostensibly benefit a polluting industry with a declining contribution to the economy and employment. public support and identification with the miners' cause have been mobilized within an idealized social imaginary with strong and powerful historical roots, but which arguably is no longer representative of the Spanish mining reality nor necessarily an appropriate social ideal. The projected figure of the miner, as a working class, hypermasculine guy worked as a catalyst for social change in an earlier era. However, it has not only reinforced gender stereotypes but arguably also increased coal extraction and burning and, therefore, lead to a worsening of climate change conditions. The social imaginary of the miner in Spain has been so powerful that it seems able to still be mobilized in such a way as to eclipse the deeply problematic aspects of coal extraction and combustion. When the employment of this powerful social imaginary was combined with a framing that directly excluded key elements of the current economic, political, and environmental reality of the mining industry, widespread public support could paradoxically be generated for this polluting industry with a declining contribution to the economy and employment.