Lessons not learned from Prestige disaster

Thursday 13 November marked the first anniversary of one of Europe's worst ecological disasters. One year beforehand, the Greek oil tanker Prestige — under a Bahamas flag and officially owned by a Liberian company — sank in the deep waters of the Atlantic Ocean, a few miles of the coast of Galiza and released its deadly cargo into the sea. The tanker was carrying 77,000 tons of heavy fuel oil, some 20 million gallons, which, as result of a crack in its hull started spilling into the sea. The bad weather conditions and poor state of the tanker caused it to break in two six days later while it was being tugged away. Spanish authorities had ordered the captain to head away from the Spanish coast and into the open sea, instead of doing whatever they could to bring the tanker to calmer waters and contain the spill.

Not once since that day, however, have the Spanish authorities admitted any responsibility for the catastrophe. For weeks after the tanker sank and the black oily tide started covering the Spanish North-West coast, the Spanish government tried to minimise the enormity of the catastrophe and did nothing, waiting to see if the huge oil slick would go away. According to Spanish government statements at the time, the spill was just a trickle during the first week. However, news images and public anger forced them to admit that the quantities spilled were in the region of several thousand tons of oil. They then claimed that the sea was pushing it away into the Atlantic and that there was no imminent danger to the Galician coast.

Once again, a few days later reality proved the authorities wrong when the first few hundred kilometres of coast was coated in the oily mess. It was only due to the work of thousands of volunteers that anything got done. With little help from the authorities and despite of being warned by experts of the high level of toxicity of the material, they started the arduous task of cleaning the blackened coastline, in some cases using their bare hands.

By December the consequences of the accident could be seen all over the Bay of Biscay as far as the French coast.

By December, thousands of demonstrators had taken to the streets of Galicia to say Nunca máis (Never again) and to call to account those politicians still denying the magnitude of the disaster. The areas affected by the so-called "black tide" are known throughout Europe for their shellfish production. The population on Galicia's coast live from the sea, fishing being the region's main economic activity. The Prestige disaster had literally left thousands of families without incomes.

The fishing boats had no other option but to stop working and start collecting the black substance that was contaminating large areas of the coast and that kept coming in with every high tide.

It was well into the month of December before the Spanish authorities were finally forced to admit that this event was not something that was going to be washed away by the sea, or by a loyal corporate media. All the pseudo scientific statements made by the government — claiming that the cold temperature of the deep sea would solidify the oil and that this would be the end of the spill or that the sea would disperse the slick so it was not necessary to organise any kind of preventive measures to protect the delicate and valuable shellfish-rich Galician coast line - were suddenly forgotten.

It was then that regional and national authorities started to pour onto the scene to get their picture taken with the volunteers; even the King of Spain made the trip to show his "deep concern". However, none of them were concerned enough to provide the necessary resources to deal with the spill.

A year later, the fishermen and women of that part of the Atlantic coast, from Portugal all the way to France, are still suffering the consequences of the negligence of their incompetent politicians. Even the French judiciary has deemed highly irresponsible the decision to try to tow away the oil tanker when logic and common practice indicated that the appropriate course of action would have been to tow it to the port of A Coruña, where the spill could have been contained.

All in all, it could have been expected that the authorities would have learned from the experience and an immediate ban would have been introduced worldwide against the use of single-hulled tankers in poor condition to transport hazardous substances. But again, it seems health and safety, and the environment, have lost the battle against big business. This is more relevant in the case of the Prestige, as the company that owned the cargo has contacts in the highest spheres of Spanish society.

One year on, this 'black' anniversary has been marked by the shower of 'positive' images shown by the government-friendly media. Everything is good news, everything is back to normal thanks to "the great efforts made by the authorities in their fight against the spill".

Only a handful dare to speak the truth. They have denounced the lack of political accountability and tell anybody who wants to listen that the claim that everything is fine is not true. They remind of the fact that no one has gone to trial, of weeks of denial and complete absence of technical resources to deal with the catastrophe. The only "effective" measure that the administration took was to award a monthly payment to those families who lost their income because of the spill. The quantity was small — €1,200 — but big enough to guarantee the return of the same politicians to power in the recent regional elections.

One year on, oil is still washing up along the 1,000 kilometres of affected coastline and single-hulled oil tankers under flags of convenience are still sailing the Fisterra maritime corridor in which the Prestige foundered.