Too much oil

last updated 8 January 2015

Madrid

At least a quarter-million Spaniards, many in oil-spattered clothes, marched through the streets of Madrid this week to protest the government’s handling of Spain’s worst environmental disaster ever. November’s wreck of the tanker Prestige sloshed 30,000 tons of oil onto Spanish beaches, devastating the fishing industry and costing the Galician region thousands of jobs. Hundreds of scientists signed a manifesto asserting that the ship should have been towed to port and drained of its oil, rather than being dragged out to sea, where it sank and continued to ooze. Newspapers are calling for the resignations of several ministers who were away at the time of the spill and phoned in hasty, ill-considered orders. El Mundo called the government “thoughtless and deceitful.”