Overview

• Azucarera Iberia filed an ERE to shut its La Bañeza plant, triggering concerns over substantial job and economic losses in a region already hit by depopulation.
• The Junta de Castilla y León formally requested that the Labor Ministry reject the collective dismissal proposal, arguing the closure lacks grounds for a mass layoff.
• Employees have staged daily 15-minute sit-ins at the factory and organized mass demonstrations on June 6 in La Bañeza’s Plaza Mayor and on June 10 before the Cortes of Castilla y León in Valladolid.
• The plant’s works council sent urgent petitions to Agriculture Minister Luis Planas and President Alfonso Fernández Mañueco seeking meetings to explore alternatives such as converting the ERE into an ERTE.
• Unions warn the shutdown could signal a wider strategy to abandon domestic sugar-beet cultivation in Castilla y León in favor of imported sugar, endangering other regional factories.