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Juan Carlos tours oil-hit villages
By CNN Madrid Bureau Chief Al Goodman
MADRID, Spain (CNN) -- Spain's King Juan Carlos has toured two villages whose fishermen's livelihoods have been devastated by a slick, as more oil washed ashore from the sunken tanker Prestige. As the king met with villagers on Monday, a French submarine dived deep into the Atlantic to determine if the sunken tanker was leaking more oil from the ocean floor. The biggest immediate threat to Spain's already-oil stained northwestern coast is a huge slick that spilled when the Prestige broke in two November 19 and sank 130 miles (210 kilometres) off the coast. Winds have pushed the slick to within 19 miles (30 kilometres) of the coast, Spanish officials said, although parts of it have already reached the shore near four fishing villages. Juan Carlos visited two of those villages, Muxia and Laxe, on Monday. The king heard local mayors complain they were being kept in the dark by the national government, which has been widely criticised for its response to the disaster. The king turned to Deputy Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy, at his side, and told him the mayors should get more official information about the slicks. Rajoy nodded, according to a reporter on the scene for CNN+, CNN's partner station in Spain. Some 1,400 people are cleaning the beaches while fishermen have set down seven miles (11 kilometres) of floating barriers, aiming to prevent the oil from entering more of the prime inlets where mussels and other shellfish are caught. Spain insists that most of the tanker's cargo of 77,000 tons (20 million gallons) of fuel oil sank with it two weeks ago. But Portuguese authorities, who are also monitoring the situation due to threats to their coast, say there are indications of more leaks.
The French mini-sub Nautile, with a crew of three, will try to settle the dispute. In Madrid, Spanish Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar announced the submarine was underwater to check up on the tanker, which rests two miles (3.5 kilometres) down on the ocean floor. The spills started on November 13, when the Prestige's hull cracked, and have now affected 550 kilometres (340 miles) of coastline, killing wildlife and choking the $330 million fishing industry. Eight ships from France, Holland and other European nations already have "vacuumed" 7,000 tons of oil from the surface of the sea, reducing the size of the largest slick menacing the coast. The government has said that slick could include up to 9,000 tons of oil, but it has not provided a recent estimate of the size. Local police said 150,000 people marched Sunday in Santiago de Compostela to protest what they said was the government's late and uncoordinated response to the oil spill. Organisers put the figure at 200,000 people. It was the largest march in memory in the capital of Galicia -- the region of northwestern Spain hit by the slick. In Madrid, Aznar met Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the current rotating president of the European Union, to urge the faster implementation of a series of already-approved EU measures aimed at improving maritime security and preventing future oil spills. Leaders of the 15 EU nations are expected to discuss these fast-track measures at an EU summit scheduled next week in Copenhagen.
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