Red Tape and Disputes Delay Spanish Mine Project

Rosa Caballero, the mayor of Minas de Riotinto, a town of 4,300 people, says the reopened mine could provide several hundred desperately needed jobs. She likens the impasse to "a critically ill person who has been awaiting an implant from a donor and is then made to wait once a donor miraculously shows up."

The mine, whose original British owners ceded to the Spanish during the dictatorship of Gen. Francisco Franco, has been closed since 2001 -- when copper prices sank below $1,500 a ton.

But with copper prices now about $8,100 a ton, and because of rising demand from China and other emerging markets, another foreign company, Emed Mining, is looking to reopen the mine and return it to production next year.