Modesto Dominguez spits in the oily water beside his fishing boat in the Malpica harbor and tries to assess the damage from Spain's worst oil spill in a decade.
"This is really two huge catastrophes for us," said Dominguez, 42, as he and his son pulled octopus traps from their 12m boat, the Cabo de Laxe. "We can't go out to fish, and when this is over, who'll want to buy poisoned fish?"
PHOTO: REUTERS
The oil spill, which may wind up being twice as big as the Exxon Valdez in 1989, threatens Galicia's fishing and tourism industries, which account for a fifth of the region's economy.
Government officials say it's too early to estimate the cost of the disaster.
Malpica, a fishing village of 2,392 people about 45km from La Coruna, the region's biggest city, is among the dozens of towns hurt by the spill, which has blotted a quarter of Galicia's 1,200km of coastline.
Most of the residents depend directly or indirectly on the sea for their livelihoods. The rest rely on tourism, in a region of 2.7 million people known for its undeveloped beaches, rolling green hills, and most of all, seafood.
"It could be a long time before people come back," Amparo Sanchez said as she wiped the counter in her Hostal J&B hotel and coffee shop on the beach in Malpica. "People come here for sport fishing, for the beach, or just to eat our percebes," a kind of barnacle that looks like an ogre's toe.
The tanker "Prestige" pumped almost 10,000 tons of high-sulphur fuel oil into the ocean off Spain's northwest corner, forcing a ban on fishing and threatening the harvest of mussels, octopus and goose barnacles.
After two days of clean-up efforts by at least 40 soldiers, the Malpica beach is still stained with the fuel oil, as are the pieces of cardboard box thrown on the floor at the entrance to the J&B.
On the beach of Barranan, about 35km up the coast from Malpica, there are dozens of soldiers in green plastic pants and ponchos shoveling puddles of coagulated tarry muck into big buckets. Then they dump them into a Volvo frontloader.
The Spanish government will dedicate ``whatever human and material resources are necessary to restore the beaches'' to their original state, Environment Minister Jaume Matas said as he dirtied his loafers walking along the beach at Barranan.
The clean up will cost an estimated 42 million euros (US$42 million) Matas said. Matas declined to estimate the cost for the fifth-largest economy in Europe.
The damage will spread far beyond Barranan and Malpica. The fishing industry represents 10 percent of the region's economy and had sales of 2.4 billion euros last year.
The tourism industry accounts for another 10 percent, providing jobs for about 30,000 people directly and many thousands more indirectly, said Ovidio Fernandez, chairman of the Confederation of Galician Tourism businesses. Tourism is Spain's biggest industry, accounting for 12 percent of the economy.
"This spill is going to ruin us all," said Jose Manuel Garcia Ruiz, who works on the docks in Malpica with his wife and son buying fish from night fishermen and selling them in nearby La Coruna and Vigo.
"No one will be coming here to spend money for a long time."
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