iPasin de Espaa?

One grows used to the odd misrepresentation by a politician, but to hear one so leavened with coarseness as a comment by Loyola de Palacio del Valle-Lersundi last month caught us by surprise.

Ms. de Palacio, a vice-president of the European Union and its transport and energy commissioner, described Swedish metal producer Boliden as a “slut,” telling an interviewer on Spanish commercial radio that the company was “very Swedish but very filthy.”

The vice-president was speaking of Boliden’s statement that it would not “take further responsibility for the terminated mining activities in Spain” — that is to say, it believed it had discharged all its obligations arising from the 1998 collapse of the Los Frailes tailings dam near Aznalcollar in Andalusia.

Accounts of the interview, which later appeared in Spanish newspapers and ultimately in the English-language press, further quoted the vice-president as saying the company “is known worldwide for throwing all sorts of rubbish into the environment,” and that it tries “to get away with all sorts of filthy things abroad that it would not be allowed [to do] at home.”

Ms. de Palacio’s office assured us that she was not misquoted, that she stands by her description of the company, and had no further comment to make. The office replied that Ms. de Palacio had been “referring . . . to the very important environmental damage made by this company in southern Spain some years ago.”

That the damages were substantial there is no doubt. That they were “made by” Boliden is debatable. Last November a criminal court dismissed charges against Boliden Apirsa, saying there was no basis for a prosecution. The Spanish minister of the environment said, at the time, that the government “had always thought there was criminal responsibility.” An appeal court disagreed, upholding the trial court’s decision.

Now the regional government of Andalusia has resolved to take Boliden Apirsa to the civil courts in the hope of recovering costs. There is no question the government shouldered considerable expense to mitigate the effects of the spill; it is right to try and recover as much of the public’s money as it can. It does, however, seem fair to seek judgments against the responsible parties, and the evidence that Boliden is one of them is rather weak. Several things ought to be recalled before government officials, particularly at European Union level, start shooting their mouths off.

The first is that Boliden bought Andalucia de Piritas out of receivership, and that it played no part in the construction of the Aznalcollar tailings dam. The consensus of inquiries into the event is that the dam failed as a consequence of slippage in a clay bed below it, a feature that should reasonably have been noted in pre-construction geotechnical investigations; the dam should, from all accounts, have been designed around that hazard.

When the majority opinion of experts places fault with the design and construction of the dam, holding a later owner responsible begins to look less like a campaign for corporate responsibility and more like a hunt for the deepest pockets — foreign ones seem to be the best, on the strength of Ms. de Palacio’s remarks.

If — in the face of the inquiries’ conclusions — the assertion be made that Boliden, through inadequate monitoring or maintenance, contributed to the failure, then at least the person making the assertion should have some strong evidence.

The second thing that ought to be remembered is that Boliden’s response immediately following the spill was rapid, competent and generous. It spent US$42.5 million on the cleanup and rebuilt the tailings enclosure to top-drawer standards. Having done that, and having previously reached agreements over costs and mine closure with the Spanish and Andalusian governments, it evidently believes itself entitled to say, “that’s that.” And Boliden’s stand is not new; it said publicly in 2000 that Los Frailes was taking no further costs from the accident.

A third thing to keep in mind is that activist groups and politicians were guilty of considerable rhetorical overkill at the time of the flood, and have not retreated from it since. The tailings became “toxic wastes” and tall tales were spread about the size and depth of the inundation. (Greenpeace spoke of “a huge tide of poisonous waste.”) It took little more than grade-school arithmetic to see past the exaggerations, but few people bothered with that. Math is so hard.

One last fact: in cutting Boliden Apirsa loose in October 2000, Boliden did not walk away from environmental liabilities but from a money-losing project. To some this may seem like sophistical hair-splitting, but it’s not: the parent company invested heavily in reconstruction of the tailings containment system at Aznalcollar long before the subsidiary sought protection from its creditors.

Perhaps the vice-president is not fully aware of the history. Or perhaps she occasionally reads the newspapers, in which event she might already know these things. If she does, her comments to COPE radio are nothing short of malicious — in the strict Common Law sense of the term.

We prefer to believe that Ms. de Palacio is misinformed, and her comments were not libel actuated by express malice but rather staged outrage for the electorate, or activist groups, or people seeking further compensation for the flood, or the interviewer. Or somebody.

The problem, though, is that playing to the crowd in this fashion treats the European Union’s electors and the residents of the Guadalquivir Valley like a lot of children. And if the vice-president really does mean to treat the residents of Andalusia and voters across Europe like children, she might at least mind her language.