Wittenoom: españoles en el ‘Chernóbil’ australiano

Wittenoom, an abandoned ghost town in the remote Australian Pilbara desert, was once home to workers and their families who lived in prefabricated houses, schools, a crèche, a hospital, a church, a bar, an outdoor cinema, tennis courts, football fields, and even a police station. The town was established around a blue asbestos mine in the 1940s, where workers, many of them European immigrants, could live and work for a good salary.

Spain had a history of emigration to Australia after World War II, with about 8,000 Spaniards settling there under a migration agreement that began in 1958. The Australian Blue Asbestos company, a subsidiary of CSR, operated a large crocidolite (blue asbestos) mine in Wittenoom from 1943 to 1966, exposing workers to dangerous levels of asbestos without warning them of the risks.

Over 2,000 workers and residents have since died from asbestos-related diseases, decades after leaving the town, which has been dubbed the "Australian Chernobyl" due to its magnitude and delayed effects. The story of two families, Daniel and María, and Milagros and Ramón, highlights the migration of Spaniards to Australia during that period.

Daniel and María met at a dance in Madrid in 1961 and married a year later, emigrating to Australia the following September. Both were immigrants with little knowledge of English when they arrived, with María still grappling with the loss of memories from her early life in Wittenoom.