Galicia's infamous Coast of Death is living up to its name. Paddy Woodworth reports on fears that a tide of black oil may now washashore, wrecking environmental havoc there and perhaps farther afield
My green Galicia is the title of a song extolling the verdant hills of this rugged Spanish region, which sits on top of Portugal on the map, and extends dangerously far into the Atlantic to the west and north.
"My Black Galicia" now seems a better title, as fuel oil from the sinking Prestige oil tanker sweeps in with the tides, in ominous repetition of a disaster 10 years ago, when another tanker, the Aegean Sea, foundered in the busy shipping lanes which crowd this coast. The political mood in Galicia is also black, as citizens wonder why so little was done over 10 years to stop this catastrophe happening again, and so little was done over the last week to minimise the impact of a disaster everyone except the authorities could see coming.
The Prestige was first reported in trouble last Wednesday. Even before the weekend, the first casualties of the first spillage were visible to anyone who walked along the beaches west of the regional capital, Santiago de Compostela. The rich crop of barnacles, clams and mussels, just ready for harvest, was covered in an greasy film. Many of them failed to open to filter the incoming sea-water. Those that still did simply sucked in more oil, and began to die as well.
It seemed obvious to the locals that disaster was looming. Yet regional, national and European authorities dithered, and it is only in the last 48 hours that Spain began to acknowledge the magnitude of the crisis.
Common seabirds like the gannet were starting to wash up dead, soaked and choked with oil, on the same beaches. There are plenty of gannets, and some to spare, in Europe's Atlantic seas. But the World Wildlife Fund has warned that the Balearic Shearwater, a spectacular ocean-faring bird which rarely passes close to land, faces an increased risk of extinction due to the oil spill.
No one can yet guess accurately what the consequences will be for the rest of the rich marine life in the many estuaries that indent Galicia's shoreline. Often known as the Coast of Death, after centuries of shipping disasters, the threat from a corrupt and cost-cutting international oil industry now offers the prospect of biological mortality on a grand scale.
The direst predictions suggest that the damage could be double that caused by the Exxon Valdez sinking off the Alaskan coast in 1989, widely regarded as the worst such disaster. Before the ironically named Prestige finally sank yesterday afternoon, Greenpeace spokeswoman María José Caballero said a sunken tanker would be "a time-bomb at the bottom of the sea". Some ecologists had argued that, if the ship could not be saved, it should be bombed so that the fuel would burn off.
Alternatively, an attempt could have been made to beach it at some point on the coast, limiting the area affected. Either decision would have demanded a level of political courage - or perhaps foolhardiness - that was not forthcoming.
There was some unhelpful squabbling over territorial responsibility between Spain and Portugal, and in the absence of an emergency response by either country, international help had to be sought belatedly to shift the tanker as far away from the coast as possible. Its break-up yesterday, however, while still within 200 miles of the coast, may now create the worst scenario, with a long black tide wreaking havoc along much of the Galician and some of the Portuguese coastline.
Some experts suggest that the long-term effects of oil disasters may not be so apocalyptic for wildlife as ecological campaigners claim, and that most or all species will recover in time. Last year's oil spill near the Galapagos islands, for example, did not result in the biological holocaust that had been predicted.
That is little comfort to the human players in this drama, the Galician fishermen and shellfish gatherers who scrape a hard living at the top of this complex food chain. Nor to the bartenders and shopkeepers in coastal villages, who depend almost exclusively on fishing industry workers for custom.
"We'll have liquid coal to drink this Christmas," one barnacle harvester bitterly told El País yesterday. The price of this cash crop quadruples in December, due to soaring holiday demand. Without this annual bonanza, earnings drop below poverty levels in a line of work that exacts as grim a toll as deep-sea fishing on its practitioners. Rocks along the Galician coast are often named after shellfish gatherers swept off by the waves.
Galicians are used to hardship of all kinds. The region is known as "the Ireland of Spain" not just for its rainfall, green landscape and romantic nationalism. (Along with the much more prosperous Catalans and Basques, Galicians are recognised as a nationality within the Spanish state, and have their own language.) Like Ireland, the region has suffered from a 19th-century famine and mass emigration.
Today many Galicians are angry that neither their autonomous government, nor Madrid, nor Brussels, have done enough to prevent a repeat of the Aegean Sea disaster, when 80,000 tonnes of crude oil were washed up on their coasts. Four thousand tonnes of fuel oil leaked from the Prestige when she first foundered, and at least a further 6,000 flooded out yesterday morning as the ship split in two. A further 67,000 remains on board and may, or may not, be released as the vessel is buffeted on the sea bed.
Regardless of the final impact of this disaster, it is obvious that urgent action is needed at EU, national and local level. Obsolete ships, sailing under flags of convenience, and availing of limited vigilance at ports like Gibraltar, should no longer be allowed to sail European or international waters. But then, that must have been equally clear when the Aegean Sea sank 10 years ago.