GALIZA: NEVER AGAIN

national | miscellaneous | news report Wednesday December 04, 2002 22:34 by xare

The Galician shore is suffering the worse black tide in European history

Caos in Galiza (north of Spain and Portugal) after the black tide from the "prestige" boat has arrived to the coast. 600 km shores have already been blakened by the petrol. Due to the lack of prevision from authorities, fishermen and fisherwomen are working day and night removing the petrol from the sea even with their hands and without appropriate clothing in a toxic environment

When the crisis begun, Spanish environmental affairs minister was hunting with some friends, and the President of Galicia's autonomous government, was on december the 1st, doing very important thinks as presenting a book in Madrid about natural medicine and giving a talk on the future of Europe.

This black tide is not the first one to happen in Galiza, nonetheless 200.000 galicians took the streets of Santiago sunday december the 1st to protest and crying "Nunca mais" (Never again), it has been the biggest demonstration ever happened in Galiza's history. A group of people chain themselves in the government and got beaten by the spanish police.

Most of the people inhabiting the 600 km of coast in Galiza depend from fishing and seafood collection. This crisis might turn Galiza's main industry into a couple of dark decades.
Most of the places affected were natural reserves and thousands of animal and plant species (some of them unique to the place are now in danger).

On top of this Spanish Government is carrying on a policy of informative restriction and they are even trying to censor journalists with the excuse they don´t want to create fear. Three journalist, two of them from corporative media "La Voz de Galicia" were not allowed to get into a fishing boat that was collaborating in picking up the petrol. Central Government has obliged french sea institution "Ilfremer" that has helped by allowing the use of their exploration submarine "Nautile" to sign a secrecy contract so as to not to publish the pictures it gets from the depth of the sea. So far according to the government the pictures show that no fuel is coming out while portuguese authorities say that new spills of oil are appearing close to the place where "Prestige" sank.

More info on:
http://www.nuncamais.org (Citizens and organization's platform agains the black tide)
http://burlanegra.vieiros.com (Commity agains the black insult)
http://www.galizalibre.org (Separatist radical left site)
http://www.iespana.es/gzlibertaria/ (Libertarian site)
http://www.egunkaria.com/english/azala.cfm (English version of Basque language daily "Egunkaria")
http://acp.sindominio.net (Madrid Indymedia)
http://euskalherria.indymedia.org (Basque Indymedia)
http://barcelona.indymedia.org (Barcelona Indymedia)