At the opening ceremony of the Siderurgia Nacional (SN), in Seixal, on August 24, 1961, the then Minister of Economy, Ferreira Dias, said proudly: “A country without steel is not a country, it is a botanical garden.”

After March 11, 1975, SN was nationalized, having been rehabilitated in 1994.

This Friday, March 11, the Spanish owner of SN announced that “the worsening of the energy crisis caused by the war and the ensuing drastic increase in electricity and natural gas prices prompted Megasa to suspend activity in Seixal and Maya.”

At stake are “700 direct jobs, 3,500 indirect jobs, and an export equivalent of 1,000 million euros annually.”

Megasa added that the halt “affects the entire production activity in Maya and steel production in Seixal, and the rolling activity continues at this plant, using the stock that still exists.”

The company said that the stoppage occurred on the fifth of this month, claiming that the “international context” made the production of the two units “uneconomically viable.”

He stressed that “a large part of the electricity-intensive industry in Spain lives in a similar scenario.”

Megasa stated that it had already proposed to the Prime Minister “the adoption of extraordinary measures in energy contracting, that is, by placing the energy acquired by the retailer in last resort (CUR) to producers in a special scheme (PRE) on electricity-intensive consumers”.

“With the support of national and European institutions and using mechanisms such as the proposed one,” the company considers “it is possible to maintain its activity,” stressing that it “has been informing representatives of workers, municipalities and government agencies of the seriousness of the situation and the measures taken.”

For the same reasons, on March 4, Megasa halted production at its plant in Narón, A Coruña, where the group is based.

(News updated at 14:56)