This time, the chapapote looks like a hailstorm. A white tide of gasoline-smelling pellets. Spheres of microplastic of just five millimeters, one of the biggest polluters of the oceans, and the raw material from which plastic bottles are made, among other things. More than two decades after the Prestige, another ship pours an environmental crisis into Galicia, including a déjà vu of volunteers cleaning beaches, and the exchange of accusations between the central government and the Xunta de Galicia in the middle of the pre-election campaign.

Hundreds of volunteers are arriving on Galician beaches armed with beach toys: colanders, rakes, shovels and coloured cubes. At the moment, what seems more suitable for collection. "They are like grains of rice, they are trodden, they are mixed with the sand and the algae, and they are impossible to remove," said a volunteer armed with a salad drainer in O Grove, where cooperatives of fishermen and mussel farmers ask for meetings with the authorities.

The Prestige of microplastic is called Toconao. A 300-metre-long container ship, entangled in the now traditional maritime mercantile labyrinth: Liberian flag, armed by Polar 3 LTD, a company based in the tax haven of Bermuda; and represented by Columbia Ship Management, a company located in the Cypriot capital of Limassol, a company located in the Cypriot capital of Limassol, whose founder and owner is the German Heinrich Schoeller and the CEO Mark O'Neil.

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Spain.

The British Justice vetoes Spain from collecting the compensation of the insurance of the Prestige

  • Written by: EFE Londres

The British Justice vetoes Spain from collecting the compensation of the insurance of the Prestige

Elections.

The Government and the Xunta clash over the dumping of pellets on the Galician coasts: "Is it always the PP's fault?"

  • Written by: JUANMA LAMET Madrid

The Government and the Xunta clash over the dumping of pellets on the Galician coasts: "Is it always the PP's fault?"

On December 5, the ship left the port of Algeciras for Rotterdam. Three days later, when it was sailing about 80 kilometers from the Portuguese town of Viana do Castelo, just 20 kilometers from Galicia, it ran into a storm, and lost six containers. In one of them there were a thousand sacks of pellets, each weighing 25 kilos. The raw material that they melt and mold in factories to create plastic products.

The problem floated in the water for several days. And no one would have known anything if on December 13 the currents had not carried him to the beach of Espiñeirido, between the municipalities of Ribeira and Porto do Son, in the Barbanza region of A Coruña. It wasn't just little balls. There were also 53 sacks about to burst, and signed by the manufacturer, the Polish company Bedeko Europe. The Finisterre Maritime Rescue Coordination Centre immediately opened an investigation to determine the origin, and it didn't take long to stumble upon the Toconao.

The lawyer for the ship's owners did not acknowledge the facts until 20 December. At the same time, it announced the hiring of specialized technicians to monitor the spill, and made themselves available to the Government of Spain to collaborate and pay for the cleanup work.

After a period of relative calm, it was thought that it would stay there, but with the start of the year the currents brought back a load that began to spread uncontrollably along the coast of the Muros-Noia estuary. The weekend reached points as distant as A Coruña and the Vigo estuary. On Saturday, Greenpeace Galicia confirmed its presence in the A Illa de Arousa Natural Park. And this Monday his arrival in Asturias and Cantabria was announced. The situation was becoming more serious than anticipated.

The situation led the shipowner to encrypt the problem for the first time. Of the six containers lost, only one held the 25,000 kilos of pellets, but they had no idea how much was going to reach the Spanish coast, or whether the container was floating or had sunk off Portugal. The specialized Environmental Unit of the State Attorney General's Office announced on Monday the opening of proceedings.

"Despite the fact that the name appears on the bags, we do not own them and we do not take responsibility," said Urszula Hass, director of logistics at Bedeko Europe, while passing the buck to Möller Maersk, the Danish company to which she entrusted the logistics of the transport. It also advertised that its pellets were non-toxic, as they were used for the production of products that came into contact with food.

The Technological Center for Multisectoral Research (Cetim), based in Culleredo, confirmed this on behalf of the Xunta. The pallets were not "toxic or dangerous", announced the Minister of the Environment, Ánxeles Vázquez. Although its composition, polyethylene terephthalate, known as PET, a type of plastic from the polyester family, does not mean that it is still plastic, "and it has to be removed from the sands".

Carmen Morales, a researcher at the University Institute of Marine Research of the University of Cadiz, warned the Science Media Centre of its damage to ecosystems, because many birds and fish mistake them for food and end up dying. Once in the sea and on the beaches, it doesn't take long for it to sneak into our own food chain. According to a study by Wageningen University in the Netherlands, humans ingest 100,000 microplastic particles a year, the equivalent of eating a credit card.

Among the species that may be affected in Galicia, the NGO SEO/BirdLife highlights the Kentish plover (píllara das dunas), a species listed as vulnerable in the catalogue of threatened species. Even so, the Ministry of the Environment announced that, for the moment, there is no species "affected by this spill in the recovery centers" of the Xunta.

The Galician Government has set up a device of about 200 people for the collection, including its own personnel, coastguards and environmental agents, but warned that the thing would be "very complicated". When asked how they planned to remove it, the Xunta's Regional Minister of the Sea, Alfonso Villares, simply replied: "With care and a little order."

  • Environment
  • Articles Ricardo F. Colmenero
  • Prestige Case
  • Alfonso Rueda