From coal not to ashes but to what? As Pontes, social memory and the concentration problem

Focusing on the case of As Pontes, Spain, where coal mine production intensified rapidly in the 1970s through to the 1990s, we contribute to the literature on resource towns, and on boom and bust communities more generally. Here, mining was contested throughout the boom period, eroding the local economy and reducing social cohesion among residents. The effects of the subsequent bust were buffered by the Spanish welfare state, and by a power plant, which now imports coal, but still employed some locals. Despite As Pontes’ problematic past and present situation, which is marked by relative stability and prosperity, we still find deep nostalgia and community features usually observed in places where the boom provoked less resistance and the bust was more dramatic. A rigid ‘industrial’ identity started to structure governance post-mining; nostalgia for the ‘good’ times dominated. In our analysis of developments at As Pontes, we apply the concept of ‘concentration problem’, in an attempt to shed light on features of governance in resource towns and difficulties in local ‘reinvention’ mode, and develop the idea further by linking it to an erasure of infrastructures of memory.