Prestige Oil Disaster Resurfaces to Spoil Spanish Holidays

The sunken oil tanker Prestige threatens to spoil the beach holidays of hundreds of thousands of tourists. Oil leaking from the vessel which sank in November has meant the removal of blue flag cleanliness awards from all of Spain's northern Atlantic coast beaches.

The beaches, stretching from the Basque country in the east to Lugo province in the west, will be expected to start filling up with holidaying Spaniards today, as half of the country begins its traditional month's break.

The organisation responsible for the blue flags said their removal from the 35 beaches was temporary and that, if the new spills disappeared, they could be back in place again after another inspection today.

But the arrival of clods of hardened fuel on beaches across the coast in recent days has killed off hope that the Prestige disaster would have no impact on tourism.

The vessel went down some 130 sea miles off the north-western coast of Spain last November, after several days during which the authorities had tried to drag it away from the Spanish coast and towards African waters.

It was carrying about 60,000 tonnes of fuel oil which, despite the predictions of the Spanish government, did not freeze into a solid block when it hit the seabed.

The oil continued to leak out of several cracks in the vessel, which split into two parts, for several weeks.

The cracks were eventually said to have been covered over by a remote-controlled mini-submarine, but either fresh leaks have opened up, or some of the oil that accumulated in the Atlantic remains in the sea off the coast and has been pushed to the shore in recent days.

The Spanish blue flag campaign said the reappearance of chapapote - solid lumps of hardened fuel oil - had forced temporary removal of blue flags during July from beaches as far away as the south-west of France.

"We cannot be sure, given the winds and currents that predominate at the moment, that someone using one of these beaches might not occasionally find some trace chapapote," the organisation said.

The blue flags will not be returned until there is a "prolonged absence in the occasional traces of chapapote on these beaches".