Fuel oil “everywhere”, “black” beaches and fishermen “forced to a halt” … In Spain, the Prestige drama created “a real shock”, still “omnipresent” in memories, says Alberto Blanco, former mayor of Muxia, a village on the front line in the face of the disaster, told AFP.
It was off this town of 4,000 souls located west of La Coruña that the Liberian tanker made a distress call on November 13, 2002, after the appearance of a breach several meters long on its side. right during a storm.
“The boat was in bad shape, with waves six to eight meters high,” says Mr. Blanco, who remembers rushing to the shore as soon as the accident was announced to see the damage. The ship “was very close to the coast, the situation was serious”.
On November 14, the decision was made to evacuate almost the entire crew. The “Prestige”, a single-hull boat belonging to a family of Greek shipowners domiciled in Liberia, but flying the flag of the Bahamas, begins to pour thick fuel oil into the ocean.
Thinking of removing the danger, the public authorities then decided to have the ship towed out to sea, first to the northwest, then to the south, instead of bringing it closer to a port to contain the leak. A controversial choice, as the storm continues.
After six days adrift, the ship finally broke in two on November 19, 270 kilometers from the Spanish coast, and sank in the cold waters of the Atlantic at a depth of 3,500 meters, causing the most serious oil spill in history. of the Iberian Peninsula.
– Judicial marathon –
“The disaster had an immense scale”, with damage “in Spain, but also in Portugal and France”, where countless oil pancakes were found, from the Aquitaine coast to Brittany, recalls Sara del Río, head of research at Greenpeace Spain.
According to available estimates, 63,000 tonnes of fuel oil escaped into the ocean, soiling 2,900 kilometers of coastline. Nearly 200,000 seabirds have also perished, despite the intervention of tens of thousands of volunteers.
“The rocks were covered with fuel oil, the beaches too. Cleaning them was very difficult, because it was viscous and sticky, and the fuel oil kept coming back with the tides. It gave a feeling of rage and helplessness”, recalls Alberto Blanco, who evokes an “endless fight”.
This fight, after long months of cleaning, took a legal turn. After a long standoff, the Spanish courts sentenced the Greek captain of the tanker to two years in prison in 2016, under medical treatment at the time and at the head of an inexperienced crew.
Declared civilly responsible, the Liberian owner and the British insurer of the boat were, for their part, ordered to pay 1.5 billion euros in compensation, the majority to the Spanish State, the French State having received, his side, about 60 million euros.
A decision hailed by the associations, which nevertheless regretted the absence of political leaders in the dock, despite decisions deemed “disastrous” by the right-wing government of José María Aznar and the regional authorities of Galicia.
“There were ill-advised choices, such as moving the boat further away instead of bringing it closer to a port (…) The oil spill then spread until it became uncontrollable,” says Sara del Río. , for whom “all the lessons (of the disaster) have not been learned”.
Ban on single-hull tankers off the coast of the EU, precise protocols in the event of sinking, reinforcement of inspections: following the sinking of the “Prestige”, several important decisions were taken to improve the safety of the transport of products dangerous.
But these measures have not completely eliminated the risk of a new oil spill.
“There is always the possibility that a disaster like the “Prestige” disaster will repeat itself. Firstly because there are still tankers in poor condition circulating, and secondly because we are transporting more and more ‘fossil fuels by boat’, recalls the head of Greenpeace.
