Forthcoming in Environment and History ©The White Horse Press http://www.whpress.co.uk
Anti-Nuclear Mobilisation (ANM) and environmentalism in Europe: a view from
Portugal (1976-1986).
Stefania Barca
Ana Delicado
Abstract
The article addresses the rise of antinuclear mobilization (ANM) in Portugal in the
1970s against the backdrop of similar movements across Western Europe. After
performing a brief review of the literature on social mobilisation against nuclear energy,
an overview is provided of the available sociological literature on environmental
mobilisation in Portugal, mostly developed in a comparative southern-European
perspective. The second section adds new empirical evidence on Portuguese ANM, and
its connection with environmental mobilisation, based on in depth research conducted
through both archival scrutiny and oral history interviews. In the conclusion, a fresh
perspective is offered on the contribution of the Portuguese case to the advancement of
research on the relationship between anti-nuclear and environmental mobilisation in
Western Europe
INTRODUCTION
On the morning of 15 March 1976, a crowd of about one hundred people gathers
at the church square of the Portuguese village of Ferrel, roughly 100 km north of
Lisbon, and marches towards a place called Moinho Velho (Old Mill) where, against the
will of local citizens and administrators, constructions have begun for the first nuclear
power plant of Portugal. Celebrated as the birthplace of the Portuguese environmental
movement, Ferrel is also an emblem of the many different, at times contradictory
elements which, for the first time in the country’s history, converged towards the
common goal of opposing the nuclear option, and thus also de facto connected Portugal
with the broader scenario of anti-nuclear and environmental mobilisation in western
countries.1
1
This article draws on research carried out under a project funded by the Portuguese Foundation for
Science and Technology: Nuclear Portugal: Physics, Technology, Medicine and Environment (1910-
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The seventies were a decade of intense anti-nuclear power protests across
Western Europe: all of them recurring to a common repertoire of mobilisation and direct
action, with which the Portuguese case shows strong similarities. Leading the scene was
initially France: in 1971, governmental plans to locate the first light-water reactor power
plant in Bugey brought out 15,000 demonstrators, who then organized an anti-nuclear
camp, a sit-in and a march to Lyon. In 1975, 400 scientists signed an anti-nuclear
manifesto published by the Grupement d’information scientifique sur l’energie
nucleaire 2. The French scene, however, soon turned into one of violent repression. In
1976, massive demonstrations at the Super Phoenix breeder reactor in Creys-Malville
culminated in violence3, with one young demonstrator killed by a gas grenade.
Following the accident, 4000 scientists signed the anti-nuclear manifesto. The same
year witnessed site occupations and road blockages at Plogoff, while 20,000 people
participated in peaceful demonstrations and occupations at Malville. After a strike at the
La Hague reprocessing plant, even the socialist trade union CFDT took a critical
position and asked for a moratorium on nuclear power4. The following year,
demonstrations against a new fast breeder reactor at the Malville power plant, attended
by 60,000 people, were heavily repressed by the police5.
ANM starts in other countries of Western Europe approximately in the same
years. In 1972, German environmentalist groups oppose plans to build nuclear plants on
the French/German banks of the Rhine. After a series of peaceful occupations, in 1975 a
Court action halts the construction of a power plant in Wyhl6. In 1976 and ‘77,
transnational mobilisation takes place (with 10-15,000 people participating) across the
Denmark/Sweden border, against the construction of the Barseback nuclear plant,
located in Sweden at 20 km from Copenhagen7. Demonstrations, camping and a
permanent occupation take place in 1978-79 against the projected construction of a new
2010) (PTDC/HC0063/2009), hosted by the Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon, in
collaboration with CES, University of Coimbra, coordinated by Tiago Saraiva.
2
D. Rucht, ‘Campaigns, skirmishes and battles; anti-nuclear movements in the USA, France and West
Germany’, Organization & Environment 4:3 (1990): 193-222.
3
D. Nelkin and M. Pollack, ‘ Political Parties and the Nuclear Energy Debate in France and Germany’,
Comparative Politics Vol. 12, No. 2 (1980): 127-41
4
Rucht, ‘Campaigns, skirmishes and battles’.
5
H. Kitschelt, 'Political Opportunity Structures and Political Protest', British Journal of Political Science,
vol. 16, N. 1 (1986): 57- 85; see also Rucht, ‘Campaigns, skirmishes and battles’.
6
Ibid.
7
Kitschelt, 'Political Opportunity Structures and Political Protest'.
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reactor in Torness, Scotland8. Mass demonstrations against the nearly completed power
plant of Zwentendorf took place in several Austrian cities in 19779; demonstrations
against the projected construction of a new power plant took place in the same year in
Capalbio and in Montalto di Castro, Italy, signalling a split of positions within the left –
with a group of intellectuals launching an anti-nuclear manifesto10. Meanwhile, with a
series of demonstrations against construction of power plants in Deba (1974-76) and
Lemoniz (1977-82), in the Basque Country, and in Xove, Galicia (1976-77), antinuclear mobilisation takes place in Francoist Spain as well: it is strictly connected to
independentism, on the one hand, and to anti-dictatorial protest on the other hand11.
Many of the above mentioned construction/protest sites became the birthplaces
of the environmental movements of the respective countries, while remaining important
symbols of anti-nuclear mobilisation well into the 1980s and beyond: the most famous
of them being Whyl in Germany, but the same could be argued for Bugey in France12,
and Ferrel in Portugal.
After briefly outlining the main comparative characters of ANM in western
countries between the early 1970s and mid-1980s, the article will offer a detailed
examination of the Portuguese case, based on an extensive exploration of archival
sources and on oral history interviews.13
ANTI-NUCLEAR MOBILIZATION IN THE WEST (1970s AND 1980s): A BRIEF
COMPARATIVE OUTLOOK
The rise of anti-nuclear mobilisation in the 1970s can be seen as the core of a broader
historical process, the emerging of a new kind of environmental consciousness and
politics in the post-war era, what Donald Worster called ‘the age of ecology’. This was
8
I. Welsh, ‘Anti – Nuclear Movements: Failed Projects or Heralds of a Direct Action Milieu?’, Cardiff
University, School of Social Sciences, Working Paper Series 11 (ISBN 1 872330 49 5).
9
P. Weishl ‘Austria’s no to nuclear power’, Paper in Japan (Tokyo, Kyoto and Wakayama (1988),
http://homepage.univie.ac.at/peter.weish/schriften/austrias_no_to_nuclear_power.pdf
10
P. Pelizzari, ‘Socialisti e comunisti italiani di fronte alla questione energetico-nucleare 1973-1987’,
Italia Contemporanea 259 (2010): 237-261.
11
R. López Romo, ‘Antinucleares y nacionalistas. Conflictividad socioambiental en el País Vasco 1y la
Galicia rurales de la transición’, Historia Contemporánea 43 (2010): 749-777.
12
On Whyl see for example J.I. Engels, ‘Gender roles and German anti-nuclear protest. The women on
Whyl’, in C. Berbhardt and G. Massard Guilbaud eds, Le demon moderne. La pollution dans les societies
urbaines et industrielles d’Europe (Clermont-Ferrand: Presses Universitaire Blaise-Pascal, 2002); see
also Rucht, ‘Campaigns, skirmishes and battles’.
13
This article is based on the analysis of news articles from national (Expresso, Diário de Notícias, Diário
Popular, Diário de Lisboa, O diário) and local (O Arado, Gazeta das Caldas) newspapers, magazines
(Frente Ecológica, Pela Vida, A urtiga) and books published by the environmentalist movement,
legislation, debates in parliament, documents from the archive of the electrical company, and interviews
with scientists, environmentalists and key figures of the local movement against the nuclear power plant.
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based on the widespread perception of the new risks facing humanity after the
development of nuclear technologies, as well as by a thorough shaking of the public
trust in science and technology14. In a recent journal issue on ANM across western
Europe, the US and Australia, Astrid Mignon Kirchhof and Jan-Henrich Meyer note
that the 1950s and early 1960s were marked by a split in public consciousness regarding
the military and civil uses of nuclear technology, the latter being largely held as a
beneficial promise of cheap and abundant power. This – according to the authors –
makes the emergence of anti-nuclear power mobilisation in the western world a
puzzling issue, which they explain with four main reasons: 1) the spreading of open
contestations, on the part of students and radical-left movements, of the politics of
unlimited economic growth, with its correlated needs for an ever expanding energy
supply, as a feature that strongly distinguished the new environmentalism emerged
between 1968 and ‘70 ; 2) the opportunity that anti-nuclear protest offered to different
strands of the counter-culture – from non-orthodox Marxism to religious and
philosophical, feminist, peace, and even right-wing ecological thought – to converge on
the common cause of social emancipation from centralized State and corporate power
structures; 3) the emergence of dissident scientific knowledge about the low-dose
effects of radiations; 4) the actual beginning of construction or enlargement of a number
of power plants across Europe and the USA, which generated unexpected local protest
and an unlikely convergence between rural/grassroots opposition and urban/national
ecologist groups and the (inter)national ‘public opinion’15.
Despite the historical importance of ANM in the rise of environmentalism in
Western Europe, only recently has the issue received an increasing attention on the part
of environmental historians16. It is political scientists that have mostly occupied the
scene of ANM studies since the early 1980s, turning it into a paradigm case for New
Social Movement theory. Developed in the course of three decades, that body of
14
Donald Worster, Nature's Economy: A History of Ecological Ideas (Cambridge and New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1977)
15
A.M. Kirchhof and J-H. Meyer, ‘Global Protest against Nuclear Power. Transfer and Transnational
Exchange in the 1970s and 1980s’, Historical Social Research vol. 39, n.1 (2014): 165-90.
16
A search on the programmes of past ESEH conferences shows only 1 result for 2003 and 2 results for
2011, whereas in 2013 there were three panels entirely devoted to ANM in Europe with 3 paper
presentations each. See: http://eseh.org/event/events-archive/. A search of the E&H journal with the word
‘nuclear’ in article’s title gives no results for the European context. Also noteworthy seems the fact that,
in a recent collection of essays on the history of environmentalism worldwide, the chapter on ANM in
Europe is authored by a political scientist: see H.A. van der Heijden, ‘The great fear. European
environmentalism in the atomic age’, in M. Arrmiero and L.F. Sedrez eds, A History of
Environmentalism. Local Struggles, Global Histories, (London: Bloomsbury Press, 2014).
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literature offers important insights for a comparative environmental history of ANM in
Europe17. It shows how, during the 1970s, anti-nuclear movements were capable of
challenging more established nature-protection groups, setting a new model of
interconnection between local grassroots struggles and broader ecological concerns, one
that greatly contributed to the building of stronger and politically more capable
environmental movements and new political formations – the Green parties18. Generally
speaking, political scientists have tended to represent ANM and environmentalism as a
manifestation of the increased importance of post-materialist values, an effect of the
unprecedented economic growth and democracy enjoyed by Western Europe in the
preceding period19. In this approach, a sharp distinction is posited between ‘materialist
values’, i.e. those associated with economic issues such as employment and social
welfare – typically held by low-income populations posited on the opposite front with
respect to ‘green’ politics – and ‘post-materialist values’, i.e. those associated with life
quality and the protection of endangered species – representative of higher-income
populations. Some authors allow for a more nuanced view, noting that
environmentalism also encompasses materialist values such as the protection of natural
resources and of human health against development projects based on life-threatening
technologies20.
Since the early 1990s, moreover, the existence of any substantial difference
between environmental concerns in rich and poor countries has been heavily
contested21. In addition, it should be noted that the distinction does not easily apply to
ANM and environmentalism occurring in peripheral areas of Europe with mostly
agrarian economies and authoritarian or post-authoritarian regimes, as in the case of
Greece, Spain and Portugal. Other factors must be drawn into the analysis in order to
understand the rise of environmental mobilization in these countries. Based on both the
available literature and on new empirical evidence, our detailed analysis of the
17
For a recent review of the political science literature on ANM in Western Europe, see H.A. van der
Heijden, ‘The Great Fear’.
18
See for example Dick Richardson and Chris Rootes, The Green Challenge: The Development of Green
Parties in Europe (London: Routledge 2006). For the German case, see: William Markham,
Environmental Organizations in Modern Germany: Hardy Survivors in the Twentieth Century and
Beyond (New York: Berghahn Books, 2013).
19
See van der Hejiden, ‘The great fear’.
20
See for instance Richardson and Rootes, The Green Challenge.
21
See J. Martínez-Alier, "The environment as a luxury good or "too poor to be green"?" Ecological
Economics, 13: 1-10. See also R.E. Dunlap, K.D. Van Liere, A.G. Mertig, R.E. Jones, "New Trends in
Measuring Environmental Attitudes: Measuring Endorsement of the New Ecological Paradigm: A
Revised NEP Scale." Journal of Social Issues 56 (2000): 425-42.
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Portuguese case is intended to help revise long-held distinctions between rich and poor,
materialist and non-materialist types of environmentalism, seeing them from a southern
Europe perspective.
Environmental mobilization in Portugal: the state of the art
While Portugal is missing from the Anglophone comparative literature on ANM
in Western Europe, it is included in studies on environmental mobilization in Southern
Europe developed in late 1990s: we can thus take these as a good starting point for our
investigation.
In her quantitative comparative study of Greece, Spain and Portugal between the
late 1970s and late 1990s, Maria Kousis found that these were characterized by ‘the
rising importance of smaller but strong coalitions of mobilizers from urban and rural
communities’, based on activist groups that ‘are autonomous and community-based,
making claims that are focused on a deeply intertwined set of ecosystem, health, and
economy issues’. She found that these groups mobilized ‘more often against nuclear
waste, nuclear energy, agricultural infrastructure projects, and the lack of ecosystem
protection in undeveloped areas’, and that ‘their claims challenge life-threatening
sources or (in)activities’. These cross-regional, urban-rural coalitions – she found ‘seek assistance from the widest variety of bodies or agencies. Yet they also target a
wide range of challenged groups’.22
Despite a weakness in formal associational culture, common to the three
countries, could have misled scholars to believe that environmentalism was absent or
socially insignificant, Kousis concluded, ‘strong community and resistance cultures’
existed which invited to not identify the environmental movement – sic et simpliciter –
with formal environmental NGOs. Rather, environmental mobilization was the result of
a myriad of non-institutionalized grassroots resistance actions targeting ‘powerful
groups in a very direct and confrontational manner about serious problems which have
immediate effects on the activists and their communities’. This was evaluated as a
successful strategy: evidence from all three countries showed that ‘when links are made
22
M. Kousis, ‘Environmental protest cases: the city, the countryside, and the grassroots in southern
Europe’, Mobilisation: An International Journal, 4:2 (1999): 223-38.
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from the local level to the global, and vice versa, then there is more hope for effective
environmental protection’.23
This South-European pattern of environmental mobilization may be explained as
related to the commonalities in post-war politics among the three countries – i.e.
authoritarian and post-authoritarian regimes – that heightened the level of social conflict
and the radical oppositional character of environmental protests. In the Portuguese case,
this scenario was at its peak soon after the 1974 revolution which abolished Salazar’s
regime, and revolved around the Ferrel protest,
commonly reputed as the ‘first
environmental conflict of the democracy era’24. According to E. Figueiredo, T. Fidélis
and A. Pires, the first two years of the post-dictatorship period (1974-76) had seen the
sudden rise of a number of environmental groups, mostly of local reach, which suffered
from weak organizational capacity and struggled to get their message heard in the
Portuguese society at large. Things changed with the Ferrel protest, which marked the
beginning of a new era for Portuguese environmentalists. Based on the analysis of
surveys conducted between the late 1980s and late 1990s, this study concluded that the
environmental attitudes of Portuguese people tended to be oriented by materialist
values, which could be related to the socio-economic context and to the rural
distribution of large part of the population: water sanitation and sewage and waste
treatment were still considered environmental priorities by the majority of Portuguese
people. Post-materialist values, however, such as participation in public decisionmaking, also played an important role25.
In his analysis of environmental politics in Portugal, Gil Nave concluded that
environmental mobilisation between the mid-1970s and mid-1980s had substantially
coincided with the nuclear issue, where ‘a weakly organized, though convincing,
discourse-oriented action that strongly mobilized public opinion’ succeeded to halt ‘the
powerful public energy planning sector’. In the Portuguese nuclear power debate, he
wrote, ‘what was at stake was the legitimacy of decision-making processes centred on
23
Ibid. More recent research, moreover, has confirmed that ‘civil society in Greece, Italy, and Spain
appears to be much stronger on environmental matters than anticipated’: see M. Kousis, D. Della Porta
and M. Jimenez, ‘Southern European Environmental Movements in Comparative Perspective’, American
Behavioral Scientist, Vol. 51 Nr. 11 (2008): 1627-47
24
L. Schmidt, ‘Ambiente e políticas ambientais: escalas e desajustes’, in Villaverde-Cabral, M.,Wall, K.,
Aboim, S. e Carreira da Silva, Filipe (eds), Itinerários. A investigação nos 25 anos do ICS. Lisboa:
Imprensa de Ciências Sociais, 2008, 285-314; see also E. Figueiredo, T. Fidélis and A.R. Pires,
‘Grassroots Environmental Action in Portugal (1974-1994)’, in K. Eder and M. Kousis (eds),
Environmental Politics In Southern Europe. Actors, Institutions and Discourses in a Europeanizing
Society (Dordrecht: Springer Science+Business Media, 2002).
25
Figueiredo et al, ‘Grassroots environmental mobilization in Portugal’.
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the mechanisms of representative democracy and administrative technocracy’. In other
words, Ferrel and the ANM represented a strongly political case for the right to public
participation in decision-making processes after four decades of authoritarian regime.
This political meaning of the struggle, he adds, lost importance once the consolidation
of democratic institutions in the following years 'gave rise to new forms of public
debate', based on expert knowledge more than on mass mobilization. At that point,
‘other powerful and highly influential actors emerged defending a non-nuclear
solution’, such as groups of dissident scientists as well as ‘influential leaders of
conventional parties and of several governments’ (including a significant strand of
ecological critique led by the monarchist party), and ‘an elite of intellectuals and media
opinion-makers’26.
Subsequent studies on environmental controversies in Portugal have revealed
long-term trends in the national political-economic scenario that need to be taken into
account when considering the Ferrel/anti-nuclear case, namely the ability of Portuguese
governments to push forward their plans even against strong opposition from grassroots
movements and environmental NGOs.27 This trend can be seen as originating in what
M.E. Gonçalves calls a ‘traditional administrative practice, which is most typically
centralised, hierarchized and secretive’, little used to taking into account scientific
advice and/or civil society’s views.28 Indeed, as we shall see in the next section, the
historical evidence shows that it was structural constraints, more than grassroots
mobilization, that ran against the nuclear option: first, the seismic character of the Ferrel
region, which led to its abandonment as a possible plant site in 1981; second, and
perhaps more importantly, the serious financial restrictions that prevented all
subsequent governments to pursue their nuclear plans, and led to their final demise in
1986.
26
G. Nave, 'Non-Governmental Groups and the State. Environmental Politics in Portugal', in Eder and
Kousis, Environmental Politics in Southern Europe.
27
See for instance the case of the incineration of hazardous industrial waste in cement factories in the
1990s and 2000s: Marisa Matias, ‘Dont Treat us Like Dirt’: The Fight Against the Co-incineration of
Dangerous Industrial Waste in the Outskirts of Coimbra. South European Society and Politics, vol. 9, no.
2 (2004): 132–158; Maria Eduarda Gonçalves and Ana Delicado, ‘The politics of risk in contemporary
Portugal: tensions in the consolidation of science–policy relations’, Science and Public Policy, vol. 36,
no. 3 (2009): 229–239; Helena Mateus Jerónimo and José Luís Garcia, ‘Risks, alternative knowledge
strategies and democratic legitimacy: the conflict over co-incineration of hazardous industrial waste in
Portugal’, Journal of Risk Research, vol. 14, no. 8 (2011): 951–967.
28
Maria Eduarda Gonçalves, ‘Implementation of EIA directives in Portugal How changes in civic culture
are challenging political and administrative practice’, Environmental Impact Assessment Review 22
(2002): 249–269.
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Despite its limited impact on energy policies, and despite its being only one of many
environmental protests taking place in the country in the mid to late 1970s, Ferrel
remains in collective memory the origin story of Portuguese environmentalism. A
recent survey on environmental conflicts in the country found that Ferrel is still reputed
the number one case, as forty selected ‘experts’ ranked it first in importance among a
pool of thirty-six major protest cases recorded between 1974 and 201429. How should
we make sense of this long-term perception on the centrality of ANM in Portuguese
environmentalism, and what does this tell us on the history of environmental
mobilization in the country? It is now time to turn to a detailed examination of the case.
ANTINUCLEAR MOBILIZATION IN PORTUGAL (1976-1986)
The antecedents
The resistance against the nuclear power plant in Ferrel has precedents in other
instances of grassroots environmental mobilisation, some of which have come to have a
direct participation in the case under study. The first recorded event of popular protest
against environmental threats occurred in 1924, when the population of Águeda, Rios
and Frasqueiros held a protest against the pollution of the river Sardão caused by copper
mining at Talhadas.30 In 1957, after the death of a miller, the population living on the
banks of river Alviela signed a petition and sent it to the President of the Town Council,
protesting against the pollution caused by the tanneries. This local struggle assumed a
national relevance because it gave rise to an Anti-Pollution Fight Committee - Popular
Ecological Association (CLAPA), the first environmental grassroots movement in
Portugal.31 Another case of grassroots protest happened in 1971, when a malfunction in
the sulphuric acid factory in Barreiro caused a cloud of yellow smoke and 134 persons
had to seek medical assistance. The population then organized a petition, first to the
29
The survey was conducted within the research project "Portugal: Ambiente em Movimento"- a
cooperation between the Ecology and Society Lab of the Center for Social Studies in Coimbra
(Ecosoc/CES), the Center for Mineral Technology of the Ministry of Science, Technology and
Innovation, Brazil (CETEM/MCTI), and the Center for Research in Economic and Organizational
Sociology of the University of Lisbon (SOCIUS/ISEG). The 16 cases that were reputed more relevant are
now published on an online map of environmental conflicts in Portugal and can be visited at
http://ejatlas.org/featured/portugal.
30
O Século, 30 Jun.1924.
31
Afonso Cautela, Ecologia e luta de classes em Portugal. Reportagens (Lisboa. Socicultur, 1977); Luís
Humberto Teixeira, Verdes anos: história do ecologismo em Portugal (1947-2011) (Lisbon, Esfera do
Caos, 2011).
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local authorities, then to the Ministry of Health.32 Nevertheless, environmental protests
were strongly discouraged by the repression of the political police under the
authoritarian regime that lasted between 1926 and 1974.33 The first Portuguese
environmental NGO, the Liga para a Proteção da Natureza (Environmental Protection
League), had been created in 1948, but its membership base was almost entirely limited
to academics. Until the revolution of 25 April 1974, grassroots protesters thus had no
organized environmental movements to turn to for support.
Plans for building a nuclear power plant in Portugal also far predate the events in
Ferrel in 1976: before the creation of the Nuclear Energy Board (JEN) in 1954, the
government had already started funding the training of nuclear researchers, through the
Nuclear Energy Study Committee at the Institute of Higher Culture (CEEN/IAC); in
1961 the National Laboratory of Nuclear Physics and Engineering (LFEN) was created,
with a mandate for developing research and training future plant workers. In 1968 the
government commissioned JEN to make a series of studies for preparing the
implementation of a nuclear power plant and dozens of reports were produced. Legal
diplomas published in 1969 (DL n. 49398) and 1972 (DL n. 487/72) established the
requirements for demanding a preliminary license for a nuclear power plant.
The revolution may have put the government’s plans on hold, but only for a
short period. The studies continued to be conducted by JEN and by the national
electrical company (CNE, which later changed its name to EDP). In November 1974 at
the 1st Meeting of the Portuguese Ecological Movement (MEP) – a new organization,
led by the journalist and activist Afonso Cautela, that was formed right after the
revolution – a campaign in favour of a nuclear moratorium in Portugal was launched; in
March of the following year a petition was started, in favour of a national debate on the
nuclear option, which gathered 500 signatures.34 This and other emerging
environmental groups started publishing translations of anti-nuclear French books and
pamphlets (e.g. Pierre Pizon’s Atom and history in 197535).
In December 1975, CNE filed the report concerning the preliminary studies of
the Nuclear Power Plant, a necessary step in obtaining the construction license and the
32
Luísa Schmidt and Francisco Manso, Portugal, um Retrato Ambiental, (RTP videos, Ed FILMS4YOU,
2011)
33
K. Hamann & P. C. Manuel ‘Regime Changes and Civil Society in Twentieth-Century Portugal, South
European Society and Politics, 4:1 (1999), 71-96.
34
Afonso Cautela, ‘Estratégia ecológica contra centrais nucleares’, Expresso, 13 Apr. 1976.
35
Pierre Pizon, L’atome et l’histoire (Paris: Protection contre les rayonnements ionisants revue
bimestrielle, 1973)
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first time an actual location is mentioned: Ferrel, a coastal village of 1,886 inhabitants
100km north of Lisbon.36
The local controversy hatches
At first, the debate was circumscribed mainly to scientific and political circles: in
November 1975 and again in March 1976, the electric company organized meetings on
energy policy in which the nuclear option was discussed and some scientists (in
particular Delgado Domingos, a physicist from the Lisbon Instituto Superior Técnico Higher Technical Institute) and MEP raised their objections.37 The issue of the Ferrel
nuclear power plant began to be mentioned in the national newspapers in February and
March 1976, when the Council of Ministers mandated EDP to have the preparatory
studies finished by October, in order to start commissioning its construction to foreign
contractors, and the issue was for the first time discussed in Parliament (on solicitation
from a representative of the Socialist Party)38. The Comissão Nacional do Ambiente
(National Environmental Committee), a government advisory board created in 1971, did
not issue a formal statement on the nuclear issue, but its president wrote an opinion
piece in the newspaper Expresso,39 in which he complained that the environmental
bodies had not been consulted, and criticised the project on five bases: the need to
explore alternative energy sources, the problem of radioactive waste, the need to import
uranium, the risks of accidents, the issue of thermal and radioactive pollution.
Construction works started at Ferrel in this period. Though the actual facilities
under construction were just a meteorological station, it attracted the ire of the
population, who had not been at all informed or consulted regarding the nuclear power
station. Silvino João, at the time a young man just returned from the colonial war in
Africa (he was the head of the parish council in 2013), describes how the population
started to mobilise
We were all wondering what was going on at Moinho Velho, they were digging
big holes and nobody told us anything. We went the mayor and he told us he knew
36
Afonso Cautela, O suicídio nuclear português (Lisboa: Socicultur, 1977).
Ibid.
38
A member of parliament makes a request for further clarification to the Minister for Industry and to the
Secretary of State for Environment, which receives an answer only in April. See: Transcription of the
parliamentary debate of 2 Apr. 1976, Parliament Diary, 21 Apr. 1976; see also: ‘Projecto de central
nuclear provoca contestação‘, Expresso, 6 Mar.1976
39
Correia da Cunha, ’Um brinquedo perigoso que exige um estudo exaustivo‘, Expresso, 13 Mar. 1976
37
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just as much as us, he knew nothing. We had to make a stand, we had to know
what was going on. (…) We had a meeting with the board of ‘Casa do Povo’ [a
local corporative organisation], that was perhaps the most democratic
organisation here, even though it was founded during the dictatorship, and they
also weren’t informed. We started threatening the national authorities that if they
didn’t tell was what was happening we would tear down the constructions.40
Though Ferrel was mainly a rural community of fishermen and farmers, some members
of the younger generations were already studying in Lisbon and in contact with
environmental activists, so they were able to pass on the information of what was being
built and the risks it entailed. Such is the case of António José Correia, then a student of
economics and the editor of a local handcrafted newspaper, O Arado, who had been in
meetings with Afonso Cautela.
At a certain point we received information that that was to be a nuclear power
station. I had a friend called Afonso Cautela who was very important. I used to
meet him at his house (…) He had this organisation that was the Portuguese
Ecological Movement, whose head office was at the Avenida da Liberdade
[Lisbon], it might have been an [illegally] occupied building, I don’t know. That’s
where we got our information from. I can read better in French, so I went there to
get some papers and magazines, things that he had there, it was the internet of
that time, my Google. So I translated these texts, the main information we had to
convey to the people. We adapted stickers, in blue, with the sun and a power
station, saying ‘je ne fume, mais je tue’ – I don’t smoke but I kill’. I translated it
into Portuguese41
O Arado was used to disseminate information about the risks of nuclear power among
the population. Silvino João was in touch with José Luís Almeida e Silva, a journalist at
the Gazeta das Caldas (a local newspaper in the nearby city of Caldas da Rainha), who
40
41
Interview with S. João, 2013
Interview with A. J. Correia, 2013
Forthcoming in Environment and History ©The White Horse Press http://www.whpress.co.uk
also made leaflets and posters alerting to the nuclear risk and had them displayed in
local cafés.42
On 5 March, the local Comissão de Moradores (Residents’ Committee) (one of
thousands that had been formed across the country in the revolution’s aftermath)43 sent
telegrams to several national and regional authorities (among which the Prime Minister
and the Ministry of Industry, EDP) to protest against the plant constructions and
announce the decision to oppose it. Despite receiving copies of the telegrams, the media
paid very little attention to the issue: no articles were found in either quality or popular
newspapers. Ten days later, having received no reply, a meeting of the Residents’
Committee was held, in which it was decided to take direct action.
In the morning of 15 March 1976, roused by the tolling of the bells, the
population of Ferrel gathered in the village churchyard and marched to the construction
site, evicting the builders and destroying the incipient foundations of the meteorological
station. The population issued then a statement, declaring their intention of repelling
any attempts to resume the construction works and setting up Comissão de Apoio à Luta
Contra a Ameaça Nuclear (Committee for Supporting the Fight against the Nuclear
Threat) (CALCAN).44
This statement describes the main arguments that were invoked to justify the
decision:
the disadvantages of such construction, in particular the pollution of the
environment, with serious dangers for health (increase in cancer, etc.), death of
marine species (algae and fishes), thus affecting important agricultural and
fishing activities, the increase in the economic and political dependency of our
country with regard to the country that is selling the power plant and that will
42
‘Os 36 anos do levantamento de Ferrel contra o Nuclear foram assinalados em Peniche’, Gazeta das
Caldas, 5 Apr. 2012.
43
C. Downs, ‘Comissões de moradores and urban struggles in revolutionary Portugal’, International
Journal of Urban and Regional Research, vol. 4, no. 2 (1980), 267-294; P. R. Pinto, ‘Urban social
movements and the transition to democracy in Portugal, 1974–1976’, The Historical Journal, vol. 51, no
4 (2008), 1025-46; T. Fernandes, ‘Rethinking pathways to democracy: civil society in Portugal and Spain,
1960s–2000s, Democratization 22:6 (2015), 1074-1104
44
Cautela, O suicídio nuclear; Teixeira, Verdes anos; A. Moniz, ’Peniche: da produção de peixe à
produção de lixo radioactivo‘, Raíz e Utopia nº 2 (1977): 159-165
Forthcoming in Environment and History ©The White Horse Press http://www.whpress.co.uk
prepare the uranium for its functioning, are far superior to the advantages it may
bring45
Environmental, public health and economic considerations at the local level were
combined with global economic and geopolitical ones, stemming conceivably from
political alignments. This fact prevents possible readings of the Ferrel uprising as a
NIMBY case: the protesters did not want nuclear power plants in anyone’s backyard,
not just their own. The country mentioned in the statement was West Germany, but the
United States, with its ‘atoms for peace’ policy, had supported much of the research
endeavours in the past decades in Portugal.
As for the political implications, Residents’ Committees were often associated
with communist and other left-wing parties46, and in fact A. J. Correia was later elected
mayor of Peniche with support from the communist party. However, there was never a
clear-cut political division around nuclear energy in Portugal. The nuclear option had
been strongly pushed forth by the left-wing provisional government, appointed after the
revolution, and a socialist government, elected in June 1976, continued to work towards
the construction of the nuclear power plant. In the following years, socialists and
conservatives alternated in power (sometimes even in coalition with each other) without
noticeable changes in energy policy. The anti-nuclear stance was first taken to
Parliament by a member of the socialist party, but one of the most outspoken opponents
of nuclear energy was a member of parliament elected by the monarchic party, which
became part of the conservative government coalition that ruled the country between
1980 and 1983. The communists also had an ambivalent position: they opposed the
nuclear power plant because it was not bought from the Soviet Union. That much is
clear in a debate in 1977, in which a parliamentarian labelled the proposed power plant
as ‘an option dictated by imperialism’, imposed by a foreign ‘nuclear industry
dominated by powerful monopolies’. Without rejecting nuclear energy per se, the
Member of Parliament proposed a construction of a pilot nuclear power plant and the
training of necessary personnel in ‘socialist countries more evolved in the field of
nuclear energy’. Also, several scientists that manifested their opposition to the nuclear
45
CALCAN Statement, 15/03/1976, author’s translation. Source:
http://www.cmpeniche.pt/News/newsdetail.aspx?news=f5165cc1-f135-4dc3-aff7-0323e68ab207 (last accessed 22
September 2015)
46
M. Lisi, ‘O PCP e o processo de mobilização entre 1974 e 1976’, Análise Social XLII(182)
(2007):181–205.
Forthcoming in Environment and History ©The White Horse Press http://www.whpress.co.uk
power plant were affiliated to the communist party. News coverage in national
newspapers affiliated with the communist party also show that, though the latter
supported the popular movement in Ferrel47;48), its stance was not against nuclear
energy as such (a few weeks previously Diário had published an article lauding the
achievements of the Russian nuclear industry)49 but rather against a Western block
sponsored nuclear power plant instead of a Russian one.50
Conversely, in mainstream newspapers, the events in Ferrel went fairly
unreported. Though the nuclear debate received a fair amount of exposure, it was
limited to the controversy among political and scientific elites. CALCAN persisted in
trying to be recognised as a legitimate stakeholder in the decision making process, but
to no avail. It issued other statements, claiming the need to involve the public in the
decisions and denouncing the risks of nuclear energy, using examples from Germany
and the Netherlands.51 Another telegram to the Prime Minister was sent, this time
signed also by several residents’ committees, local civil society organizations, the
canned fish and fishermen’s trade unions, and the local technical school.52 The mayor
announced that meetings would be held across the municipality to discuss the nuclear
issue. A debate took place in a nearby town, organized by the local newspaper Gazeta
das Caldas, with two officials from JEN, one representative from the Residents’
Committee of Ferrel and Afonso Cautela. In the following months several other debates
were organized locally, with the participation of scientists (Delgado Domingos, Carlos
Matos Ferreira) and environmental activists from Lisbon and other parts of the country.
Conversely, scientific debates organized in Lisbon, such as the 2nd National Meeting on
Energy Policy (March 1977), included the participation of representatives from the local
community of Ferrel. Two petitions, demanding an open public debate on the nuclear
power plant and a thorough discussion in Parliament, were launched locally, but the
Prime Minister refused to receive a delegation of residents.53 Government officials also
failed to attend any of the local meetings.
47
‘Nuclear power plant threatens fishing’, ‘Ferrel population calls off nuclear power plant’, ‘Peniche
council rejects nuclear plant’ For negotiators of the power plant: tourism is more important that the
people’s health: Headlines in Diário 15th March, 16th March, 18th March and 20th April 1976
48
‘In Ferrel the bells tolled calling out to the fight against the nuclear dragon’ Headline, Diário Popular
23rd January 1978
49
Diário Popular, 1st March 1976
50
‘Energy: is Portugal being governed from Washington? World Bank imposes rise in tariffs. Nuclear
power plant: an obscure deal’ Headline in Diário, 27 March 1976.
51
Moniz, ‘Peniche: da produção de peixe’
52
Cautela , O suicídio nuclear;Teixeira , Verdes anos…
53
Moniz (1977), Peniche: da produção de peixe
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In order to appease the local protest, in April 1976 the Minister of Industry
announced that JEN and EDP would conduct an ‘enlightenment campaign’ regarding
the safety of nuclear power plants, appointing a ‘Coordination Committee for Informing
the Public on Nuclear Issues’ in September of the same year (despacho n. 124/76, 9
September 1976). Besides holding some sessions for the media, this Committee
prepared a booklet aimed at the population of Ferrel explaining the choice of the
location. The booklet ‘Site studies for the nuclear power plant’54 was remarkably
patronizing (filled with colourful childish drawings – see Figure 1 and 2) and dismissed
all risks as manageable through safety regulations, but it was never distributed.
However, JEN did publish in 1977 a series of brochures on nuclear energy,55 also rich
on images, containing a tranquillizing message.
Figure 1 Illustration of the location of the nuclear power plant
Source: booklet ‘Site studies for the nuclear power plant’, EDP, 1976, p. 8
Figure 2 Illustration of natural and artificial radiation risks
54
Archive of the electrical company, reference I12.03.03-07.
Jaime Manuel da Costa Oliveira and Eduardo J. C Martinho, Energia nuclear: origem e aplicações
(Lisboa: Junta de Energia Nuclear, 1978).
55
Forthcoming in Environment and History ©The White Horse Press http://www.whpress.co.uk
Source: booklet ‘Site studies for the nuclear power plant’, EDP, 1976, p. 13.
Aiming at pacifying political and scientific opponents, the government declared in
August 1976 that a Livro Branco do Programa Nuclear (White Book on the Nuclear
Program) would be prepared, but the committee in charge of its drafting, led by a
researcher from LFEN and composed by other scientists and engineers from the same
institution and EDP, was only appointed in December. This committee revised the
scientific literature and reports and conducted auditions with several parties, pro and
against nuclear. Its conclusions were ambiguous: albeit in favour of nuclear energy, the
report concluded that ‘in light of the available data, it would not go amiss to postpone
the decision about the immediate setting up of nuclear power plants’.56 However,
despite being submitted to the government in December 1977 and even published in
book form in 1978, the report was only publicly disseminated in June 1980.
Meanwhile, the anti-nuclear movement gained momentum. Though the focus
was still Ferrel, the local population played a gradually diminishing role, whereas
environmental activists, supported by sympathetic scientists, became the driving force
of the protest. In February 1977 an environmental magazine named Viver é Preciso (To
Live is Necessary) published a manifesto against the government’s pro-nuclear stance,
significantly entitled ‘We are all people of Ferrel’. In June a forum was held in Caldas
da Rainha, where motions for a ‘Moratorium for the Portuguese Nuclear Program’ and a
‘Popular Creative Intervention in Defence of a non-depleted environment’ were
56
Ministério da Indústria e Tecnologia, Centrais nucleares em Portugal: projecto de livro branco
(Lisboa: Imprensa Nacional Casa da Moeda, 1978)
Forthcoming in Environment and History ©The White Horse Press http://www.whpress.co.uk
presented. A few months later the local newspaper started publishing a supplement
called ‘Pela Vida’ (‘For Life’), addressing environmental and energy issues.
The crowning moment of this movement occurred in January, again at Caldas da
Rainha: the two-day Festival ‘Pela Vida e Contra o Nuclear’ (‘For life and against
nuclear’) brought together close to 3,000 participants. The Festival comprised debates,
workshops, exhibitions, performing arts and music shows and several other activities,57
in what Luisa Schmidt characterizes as ‘fitting to the ‘demo-festive’ [a witticism joining
the words demonstration and party] climate of the period’.58 Scientists, artists,
environmentalists (including the above mentioned CLAPA and some activists from
Spain), and the Residents’ Committee of Ferrel took centre stage. The festival
celebrated the 1976 Ferrel uprising with a march to the power plant site, where potatoes
were planted to symbolize the victory of agriculture over hazardous energy generation.
At this point, non-local activists (mostly from Lisbon) already outnumbered the
local population. Moreover, some of the leading figures of the 1976 events declined the
invitation to participate:
I had already done my work. I didn’t go to that [march], I can explain why. I felt
the veracity of the population march. To me that was the real thing. Since I had
been there, at the real thing, it’s not really my character to follow in the heard. I
don’t like crowds. I don’t know who’s coming with me and for what reasons59
Again, these events received very little coverage from national media.60 The few
newspaper articles published on that year concerned only the delays on the publication
of the Livro Branco.
Afonso Cautela called the Festival the ‘unifying current’ of the ecological
community, although he also acknowledged that it fizzled out after the event and the
movement was emptied out.61 But the centrality of the nuclear mobilization for the
Portuguese environmental movement can be easily discerned by searching through the
57
Associação Portuguesa de Ecologia Amigos da Terra, Antes... durante... e depois de Chernobyl: o
nuclear no mundo e em Portugal, (Lisboa, A.P.E., 1987)
58
L. Schmidt. ’Ambiente e políticas ambientais: escalas e desajustes’, in M. V. Cabral et al. (eds.)
Itinerários: a investigação nos 25 anos do ICS, pp. 285–314 (Lisboa: Imprensa de Ciências Sociais,
2008).
59
Interview with A. J. Correia, 2013
60
An exception was the article published in Diário Popular ‘Party against the nuclear danger’ 23rd
January 1978
61
‘Antinuclear: uma internacional pela vida’, A urtiga, September/October 1978.
Forthcoming in Environment and History ©The White Horse Press http://www.whpress.co.uk
publications of environmental organisations (magazines and books)62 of the time:
throughout the second half of the 1970s dozens of articles were published on the nuclear
issue, giving particular attention to anti-nuclear movements across Western Europe.
Although the presence of foreign activists in Portugal was scarce during the protests,
some sent support letters, which were published in the environmental movement
magazines. Several of the Portuguese environmentalists and scientists that led the
protests had lived abroad, mainly in France, where they had come into contact with the
anti-nuclear movement.
I went to France in 1969 to avoid the draft for the colonial war. I didn’t agree
with the colonial politics. (…) I went on a scholarship to study French literature
(…) I used to read a satirical newspaper, Charlie Hebdo, (…) that had a column
about environmental issues, I knew nothing about this at the time, from a civic
and public but also philosophical perspective. (…) The opinion column was very
combative, it was written by Pierre Fournier (…) who later founded ‘La Gueule
Ouverte’ , due to the need to create an autonomous space focused on ecological
issues. (…) The antinuclear fight started in France with that magazine (…) I
started to think about that paradigm, started questioning my previous thoughts
and opened a new line of reflection and thought63
Therefore, the impact of the anti-nuclear international movement over the national one
cannot be disregarded, even though the Portuguese television (constrained by political
censorship) had not broadcasted any coverage of the international anti-nuclear
movements of the 1950s and 1960s64. The anti-nuclear movement in Portugal adopted
much of the same imagery of protests elsewhere, e.g. the symbol of the red smiling sun,
against a yellow backdrop, surrounded by the slogan ‘Nuclear power? No thanks’.
However, the movement also created its own iconography, used in posters, stickers and
as illustration of magazine articles, deploying natural elements (animals, trees) to
symbolise the opposition to nuclear, death symbols (graveyards, skeletons) to represent
nuclear energy and national references (map of the country, local political figures) to
embed antinuclear struggle in the Portuguese context (Figures 3 to 5).
62
A urtiga, Frente Ecológica, suplemento ‘Pela Vida’, Cautela O suicídio nuclear
Interview with José Carlos Marques, 2013
64
Luisa Schmidt, Ambiente no ecrã: emissões e demissões no serviço público televisivo, (Lisboa,
Imprensa de Ciências Sociais, 2003), p. 301.
63
Forthcoming in Environment and History ©The White Horse Press http://www.whpress.co.uk
Figure 3: Sticker of the Festival For Life Against Nuclear
Source: Archive José Pacheco Pereira,
http://ephemerajpp.com/
Figure 4: Sticker of the CALCAN group
Source: Archive José Pacheco Pereira,
http://ephemerajpp.com/
Figure 5: Sticker of the Portuguese Ecological Movement
Forthcoming in Environment and History ©The White Horse Press http://www.whpress.co.uk
Source: Archive José Pacheco Pereira,
http://ephemerajpp.com/
Figure 6: Cartoon published in the environmental magazine A urtiga
Source: A urtiga, n. 1, February 1978
As in the French case, a number of Portuguese dissident scientists became steadfast
supporters of the local protest, lending credibility and legitimacy to the risk claims of
citizens and environmentalists. They participated in local meetings, wrote opinion
pieces for the newspapers, issued a manifesto in favour of a public debate on the nuclear
option in June 1977, subscribed by over a hundred scientists and engineers (including
Forthcoming in Environment and History ©The White Horse Press http://www.whpress.co.uk
some from LFEN and EDP, a further sign that the controversy was far from clear-cut)65
and a year later formed a ‘Promoting Committee for the National Debate on the Nuclear
Option’, with double the number of signatories of the manifesto.
The post-revolutionary background, though, is the fundamental backdrop of the
movement: it brought the newly achieved freedoms of association and public
demonstrations and the surge of Residents’ Committees that helped mobilize the
citizens of Ferrel. It also spurred a solidarity movement from Lisbon’s intellectual elites
(scientists, journalists, environmental activists, artists) towards the plights of rural
populations that were expressed through massive literacy campaigns66 and the Serviço
Cívico Estudantil (Student Civic Service).67 Some of the scientists and activists that
were involved in the protest had been away from the country and did not take part in the
1974 revolution, thus the anti-nuclear protest gave them the opportunity to give their
contribution to the ongoing process of democratization from below. The leading cultural
magazine of the time,68 Raíz e Utopia, published a roundtable titled ‘O núcleo do
nuclear ou Energia nuclear, uma ilusão cara?’(‘Nuclear’s nucleus or nuclear energy: an
expensive illusion?’) on its first issue, and the Manifesto on energy policy on its second
issue (both in 1977). The involvement of artists – several released protest songs against
nuclear power, one directly mentioning the case69, which was considered ‘almost the
official anthem of Ferrel’70 – was also typical of the spirit of the time, with its strong
link between art and revolution.71 Students and a professor from Porto’s Faculty of Arts
painted a mural against the nuclear power plant on a house near the town square of
Ferrel. Since the house was later demolished, the mural was reproduced in a tile panel
and placed in the same location, in celebration of the uprising.72
65
C. M. Ferreira, ‘Por um debate nacional sobre a opção electronuclear (Manifesto sobre política
energética)’, Raíz e Utopia 2 (1977), 151-158
66 S Vespeira de Almeida, A caminhada até às aldeias: A ruralidade na transição para a democracia em Portugal Etnográfica,
.
‘
’,
vol. 11, no. 1 (2007):115–
139. 67 L Tiago de Oliveira
,’ Schools without walls during the Portuguese Revolution: the Student Civic Service (1974-77)’. Portuguese Journal of Social
vol.
(2005): 145-168; Fernandes, ‘Rethinking pathways to democracy
68
Cristiano Pinheiro da Paula Couto, ‘Raiz & Utopia: Democracia E Discurso Crítico No Pós-25 De
Abril(1977-1981)’ XVIII Simpósio Nacional de História, Florianopolis, July 2015.
69
“In Ferrel, close to Peniche/they are building a power plant/that for some is nuclear/but for many is
deadly/Fishes will come to your hand/One is sick, the other dead/The fisherman has no livelihood/The
shad and the salmon die/’This is civilization?/do said the gentleman/Be careful”, Rosalina, Fausto, in
Teixeira , Verdes anos, p. 96.
70
Interview with José Manuel Almeida Silva, 2013.
71
N. Guimarães-Costa, M.P.E Cunha, M.P.E. and J. V. da Cunha, ‘Poetry in motion: protest songwriting
as strategic resource (Portugal, circa 1974)’, Culture and Organization, vol. 15, no. 1 (2009):.89–108.
72
Interview with José Manuel Almeida Silva, 2013.
.
Science,
4 no. 3
Forthcoming in Environment and History ©The White Horse Press http://www.whpress.co.uk
Figure 7 Tile panel reproducing a mural painted in the 1970s
Source: author’s photo, Ferrel, 2013
Closure of the case
Although at the end of 1978 the first intervention from the International Monetary Fund
in Portugal made abundantly clear that the financial resources for building a nuclear
power plant were non-existent, the project was officially cancelled only in 1981, on the
basis of seismological studies that had shown high earthquake risk at Ferrel. However,
the political will to adopt nuclear energy in Portugal took a while longer to dispel. The
National Energy Plans of 1982 and 1984 still envisaged the construction of nuclear
power plants (against which a new petition was launched ‘by a large number of people
from different sectors and left-wing sensibilities’)73 and the main right-wing party held
a conference in 1984 about the nuclear option. However, the economic background was
far from favourable: Portugal was forced to ask for another intervention of the
International Monetary Fund in 1983. Much like what many of the antinuclear critics
claimed, the country simply lacked the resources for setting up nuclear energy
generation. In 1986, under a right-wing government, the Secretary of State for the
73
Schmidt (2003), Ambiente no ecrã, p. 400.
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Environment Carlos Pimenta, a staunch defender of environmental protection,
announced that the nuclear option was definitely abandoned.74
As already mentioned, the anti-nuclear movement can hardly claim that it played
a significant role in the decision to call off the construction of the nuclear power plant,
as successive governments failed to engage with protesters in any meaningful way, or
even to recognise the need for public debate. Moreover, only half-hearted attempts at
persuading the local population were made, with no intention of taking its concerns into
consideration.
The aftermath
Even though Portugal remained nuclear energy free, it has still been exposed to risks
from nuclear power plants in neighbouring Spain, some of which were built close to the
border or near rivers that cross both countries. In the 1980s, the construction of the
power plant of Almaraz and the plan to create nuclear waste repository in Aldeadávila
de la Ribera, a village located in the Douro river basin just 4 km from the Portuguese
border, motivated protests from environmental organizations and local citizens from
both sides.75
As to the environmental movement, many of the small groups which were active
in the anti-nuclear protest eventually disappeared. Conversely, new Environmental NonGovernmental Organizations (such as Quercus or Geota) emerged in the 1980s, with a
larger support base, often lead by members of the scientific community: they became
gradually recognized by the governments as legitimate partners and effective pressure
groups.
Celebrations for the 30th anniversary of the Ferrel uprising, in 2006, brought
together old and new environmental activists, scientists, left-wing politicians and the
local leaders – some of the leading figures of the protest were by now heading the local
authorities of Ferrel and Peniche, having been elected the previous year. The celebration
included the re-enactment of the march against the power plant, the unveiling of a
commemorative plaque in the churchyard and of a panel of tiles reproducing a mural
against nuclear power painted at the time of the protest (Figure 3). A fiction book
74
Teixeira, Verdes ano.; José Paiva ‘Marcos ambientais da década de 70’, in 60 anos pela natureza em
Portugal (Lisboa, LPN, 2008); Inês Mansinho, and Luisa Schmidt, , ’A emergência do ambiente nas
ciências sociais  : análise de um inventário bibliográfico‘ Análise Social, 125-126(1-2) (1994):441–481.
75
Mansinho and Schmidt ’A emergência do ambiente’; Schmidt , Ambiente no ecrã. See also: Ejolt Atlas
Portugal: http://ejatlas.org/conflict/nuclear-waste-storage-near-the-spanish-frontier-of-portugal.
Forthcoming in Environment and History ©The White Horse Press http://www.whpress.co.uk
retelling the events of 1976 was launched with the occasion76 and a new platform of
ENGOs against nuclear energy was formed in response to the re-emergence of the
nuclear lobby.77 Also, the mayor of Peniche signed an agreement with a renewable
energy company to set up a wind farm close to the proposed location of the nuclear
power plant.78 Over the coming years, the anniversary was often marked with
commemorative events, such as a film festival in 2012.
CONCLUSION
The previous section shows how the anti-nuclear movement was indeed a foundational
moment for the environmentalist community in Portugal. Mobilisation was mainly
fostered by the local youth in contact with environmental activists from Lisbon, fairly
well informed on the ANM across Europe. Scientists were drawn into local debates and
in turn invited local activists to participate in technical discussions. Celebratory events,
just as the festival in Caldas da Rainha brought together environmentalists, scientists,
artists and local residents. It was this coalition of different actors that marked the
difference from previous cases of environmental protest and led to labelling Ferrel as
the founding moment of the environmental movement in Portugal. In addition, joining
together disparate activists working in near isolation and giving them a common goal,
nuclear protest laid the foundations for far more stable ENGOs. It had also helped forge
links between environmentalists, scientists and other cultural elites, strengthening the
foothold of environmental issues in public opinion and policy making.
After Ferrel, environmental grassroots movements became increasingly more
common79. From the ‘kaolin wars’ in Barqueiros80 to the protracted fight against the coincineration of hazardous industrial waste in Souselas,81 through the protests against the
contamination of the river Lis with sewage from pig farms,82 there have been many
instances of local populations rising against perceived environmental threats. What has
changed since the 1970s is the repertoire of action available to protesters, in particular
76
Mariano Calado, A maldição das bruxas de Ferrel, (Porto, Edições Sempre em Pé, 2006).
‘População de Ferrel revive primeiro protesto antinuclear30 anos depois’, Público, 19 Mar. 2006;
“Ambientalistas criam plataforma contra o nuclear”, Público, 20 Mar. 2006.
78
Later, a wave power experimental facility was set up in the sea, directly in front of the nuclear power
plant site, also a project supported by the local authority.
79
Figueiredo et al, ‘Grassroots Environmental Action in Portugal (1974-1994)’..
80
Schmidt, ‘Ambiente e políticas ambientais’
81
Matias “Dont Treat us Like Dirt’; Gonçalves and Delicado, ‘The politics of risk’; Jerónimo e Garcia,
‘Risks, alternative knowledge strategies’.
82
J. G. Ferreira ‘Façam o milagre! Poluição, media e protesto ambiental na bacia do Lis’. In VII
Congresso Português de Sociologia. (Porto, APS, 2012).
77
Forthcoming in Environment and History ©The White Horse Press http://www.whpress.co.uk
summoning the media to report on the case (receiving much more attention than before,
especially since the emergence of private TV channels)83, legal actions and injunctions
in Portuguese and European courts, and complaints to European authorities. Also,
European environmental laws have made public consultation mandatory in
environmental impact assessments. However, authorities still seems reluctant to let local
residents and ENGO concerns stand in the way of profitable projects, placing all sort of
obstacles in the way of effective public participation.84
Overall, our research has found strong convergences between ANM in Portugal
and in other western countries: as delineated in the literature, the protest in Ferrel
adopted languages and motivations originated in the counter-culture and radical left
politics of the 1960s, including radical critiques of economic growth and technocracy; it
represented a convergence between different political groups, beyond the party system;
it enjoyed support on the part of dissident scientists; it was originated by the starting of
construction works. As in most other cases of anti-nuclear protest in the same period,
also in the Portuguese case middle-class and grassroots movements can be seen as
allies, rather than competitors85.
However, Portuguese ANM also reveals three peculiar aspects, which should be
understood against the backdrop of the country’s position at the European periphery,
both in the geo-political and the economic sense: 1) a combination of materialist and
post-materialist values; 2) a strong connection to revolutionary politics; 3) the relevance
of financial constraints in halting the implementation of the nuclear plan.
As regards the first aspect, the mostly agrarian character of the Portuguese
economy of the time explains why protests emerged as a defense of ecosystem integrity
and natural resources (land and fisheries) which were vital for the local economy. Such
materialist values combined with those of the ecologist counterculture, with the defense
of local autonomy and sovereignty and with the struggle for the democratization of
public decision-making. It was such combination of different values what made possible
the coalition between local and national, rural and urban levels of mobilization.
83
Figueiredo et al., ‘Grassroots Environmental Action in Portugal (1974-1994)’; Schmidt, ‘Ambiente e
políticas ambientais’.
84
Chito, B. & R. Caixinhas ‘A participação do público no processo de avaliação do impacte ambiental’,
Revista Critica de Ciências Sociais 36 (1993): 41–55; Lima, M.L.P. ‘Images of the public
in the debates about risk: consequences for participation’, Portuguese Journal of Social Sciences 2(3)
(2004): 149–163.
85
On this aspect see for example: J.A. Carmin, ‘Voluntary Associations, Professional Organisations and
The Environmental Movement in the United States’. Environmental Politics, 8:1, 101-121. See also
Forthcoming in Environment and History ©The White Horse Press http://www.whpress.co.uk
Second, the mobilization was strongly marked by the political climate of the
period, whose most important driver was the struggle over the democratization of public
decision making. Although this element of the ANM is found everywhere else
throughout western countries in the 1970s, it assumes a greater importance here
because, unlike other western European countries, Portugal did not have wellestablished environmental organizations before the Revolution. Coinciding with ANM,
Portuguese environmentalism thus assumed a radical political character as a movement
for the democratization of environmental policies. In this sense, however, the Ferrel
protest should be considered a lost battle, for it failed to fundamentally alter the
decision-making process on energy and environmental policies in Portugal. Despite
article 66 in the Portuguese Constitution (1976) recognized the “right to a healthy and
ecologically balanced living environment” and the “duty to defend it”, the
environmental impact of modernization policies was kept out of the governmental
agenda until 1987, when a "Basic Law of the Environment" was issued as an effect of
Portugal’s integration in the EU86.
Finally, what strongly marks the Portuguese case is the relevance of structural
constraints, and especially of extra-national financial decision-making, in determining
the demise of the national nuclear power plan.
86
See Ejolt Atlas – Portugal - ‘Description’: http://ejatlas.org/featured/portugal.