The Biggest Oil Spill You’ve Probably Never Heard Of | Spain: The Lawless Sea | FRONTLINE/World

♪ ♪ >> MARK SCHAPIRO: Northwest Spain. Galicia, the edge of Europe... A wild stretch of jagged coast and some of the world's richest fishing grounds. To locals this is a holy site. A church commemorates the place where the Virgin Mary is said to have come ashore in a stone boat. There's another monument here, depicting the cracked hull of a more modern ship, recalling a tragedy just offshore. In November 2002, a Greek-owned oil tanker called the Prestige broke apart in a storm. 20 million gallons of oil began to pour from the ship, as it sank into the freezing Atlantic.

On shore, the people of Galicia watched and waited, braced for what might be coming. A terrible black tide began to arrive, devastating the coast of northern Spain all the way into France. It was one of the worst oil spills in history. The story of the wreck of the Prestige begins in Russia, where the ship is loaded with oil in the port of St. Petersburg. The oil tanker has a shady and complicated history. Her owners are Greek, but they have registered their ship through a front company in Liberia. It's a strategy that limits taxes and liability. At 26 years old, the rusting, single-hulled tanker is well past the age of retirement. But that doesn't stop the owners from loading the aging ship with crude oil number four, one of the most toxic fuel oils in the world.

On October 30, 2002, the Prestige sets off, not certain of her destination or who will buy her oil. The Prestige passes through the narrow Straits of Denmark. She sails across the North Sea and through the crowded English Channel. As the ship enters the Atlantic, the captain receives word of a buyer in Asia. (waves crashing) The Prestige is entering the area off Spain known as Costa del Muerte, the Coast of Death... ...just as a winter storm is building into a force-nine gale. The captain, Apostolos Mangouras, hears a loud bang from the starboard side. (loud bang) Suddenly, the ship begins to take on water. Her hull is battered by 20-foot waves.

And her engines shut down. The Prestige is overwhelmed. >> (speaking Greek on radio) (continue conversing over radio) (helicopter whirs) >> SCHAPIRO: Captain Mangouras issues a call for help. Rescue copters hurry to evacuate the Filipino crew. In the tradition of the sea, the captain and his two top officers remain on board. He wants to bring the ship into a safe harbor. Already leaking oil, the ship drifts to within four miles of the coast. >> (speaking Spanish) >> SCHAPIRO: Spanish authorities dispatch a man to take control of the Prestige, 68-year-old Captain Serafin Diaz. >> (speaking Spanish) >> SCHAPIRO: As Diaz reached the deck, he realized it was covered with oil.

The ship was dead in the water, crippled by a gaping 50-foot hole on the starboard side. The steel had been ripped away and the ship was flooding. (radio chatter in Spanish) >> (speaking Spanish) >> SCHAPIRO: It was Captain Mangouras. Diaz explained that the Spanish government had ordered him to restart the ship's engines and steer the Prestige out to sea, away from Spain. But Captain Mangouras refused, saying the ship should be brought out of the storm, into port, where the leaking oil could be contained. The two men argued for hours. Finally, Diaz threatened the captain. >> (speaking Spanish) >> SCHAPIRO: The Spanish plan was to get the wounded ship out to deep water in the middle of the Atlantic.

But after several days of sailing, and only 130 miles off the coast, the Prestige breaks in two. And it sinks. Captain Mangouras was airlifted to shore the night before the ship sank and immediately arrested. He was charged with negligence and resisting Spanish authority. The oil started coming fast. It came in sheets, massive clumps of oil washed in with the tides. The entire northern coast of Spain was devastated as the oil killed everything in its path. Millions of fish and birds were suffocated or poisoned by the black tide. The Spanish government was completely unprepared. >> (speaking Spanish) >> SCHAPIRO: The people of Galicia had to clean the poisonous oil by hand.

The damage stretched along 350 miles of coastline with almost twice the oil that spilled out of the infamous Exxon Valdez in Alaska. For people in the United States, this was a one-day story just before the war in Iraq. For the people of Galicia, the Prestige would be an enduring nightmare. >> All of us who've been cleaning the beaches... ...we know that even if we get everything clean, our environmental land is going to be dead for many years. Maybe our children aren't going to be able to enjoy the beaches and this land. So... I don't know, I don't know. Sorry, but I don't want to talk anymore. (water spraying) >> SCHAPIRO: For the next six months, the beaches were like a scene from science fiction.

High-pressure hoses blasted sticky oil from the rocks. The cleanup will cost an estimated $2 billion. The ship's insurance only covered $25 million. And the toxic oil doesn't just disappear. It washes down into the sand, and will remain there for decades. Spain imposed a six-month ban on fishing along most of its northern coast. Only recently have Galician fishermen returned to the sea. The clams and mussels here used to be sold all over Europe. Now environmentalists question whether people should eat shellfish from this region at all. (speaking Spanish) >> SCHAPIRO: But Galician fishermen are anxious to reassure me that the fish is okay. >> (speaking Spanish) >> SCHAPIRO: Rafael Mouzo is a fisherman and the mayor of a coastal village, Corcurbion, hard hit by the oil.

>> (speaking Spanish) (cheering) >> SCHAPIRO: On the first anniversary of the Prestige disaster, 100,000 people took to the streets in the Galician capital of Santiago de Compostela. A new movement has emerged: Nunca Mais-- "Never Again." >> (chanting): Nunca mais! (singing) >> SCHAPIRO: Like Mayor Mouzo, people here want to know exactly who was to blame and who should pay. >> (singing continues) >> NARRATOR: The Spanish government says they have found documents that show the Prestige should never have been at sea.

Just before the Prestige sank, the Spanish government sent Serafin Diaz back onto the ship in a risky mission to search for evidence. Lowered onto the ship once more, Diaz ran up to the bridge and began to grab everything he could. >> (speaking Spanish) >> SCHAPIRO: The documents reveal the secret history of the Prestige. It turns out that while the ship was in St. Petersburg, another captain was in command, Esfraitos Kostazos. He sent a series of urgent messages to the Greek ship owners, warning that the Prestige was in unsound condition. In fact, he threatened to quit unless the ship was repaired. The Greek owners' response was to replace Captain Kostazos with Captain Apostolos Mangouras.

Now awaiting trial, Mangouras has refused to talk about the case, including the condition of the ship. The warning from Captain Kostazos did not stop the owners from taking a huge risk, sending an ailing ship out to sea with a full load of oil. There were no rules of international shipping to stop them. In Madrid, when the Spanish government began their investigation, they wanted to question the owners. But at first they couldn't even tell who the owners were. >> (speaking Spanish) >> SCHAPIRO: The mysterious owners of the Prestige have now been identified as a Greek shipping family.

The Coulouthros family were able to disguise their ownership by creating a front company in Liberia. The only thing that company owned was the Prestige. When the ship sank, there were no other assets to pursue. The Prestige tore open in a storm that other ships plowed through. The investigators wanted to know if the ship's inspection company had been aware of any problems that might have caused the catastrophe. The company responsible for inspecting the Prestige was the American Bureau of Shipping, ABS. This is their corporate video. ♪ ♪ For over 20 years, ABS had the contract to monitor the Prestige's condition. In May, just six months before it sank, ABS certified that the Prestige was seaworthy. But the original captain, Captain Kostazos, inspected the ship himself in St. Petersburg and sent this fax to ABS.

In this hand-written note, the captain alerts ABS to nine serious deficiencies on board the Prestige. The problems include boilers in very bad condition, leaking pipelines and cracked and corroded beam parts in the ballast tank. We contacted ABS at their corporate headquarters in Houston. They are a well-respected ship inspection company with offices throughout the world. But they declined to be interviewed on camera and sent us this written response: ABS has no evidence that the fax was ever transmitted to them. They say that the role of ship inspectors is very limited. They form "only one part of a maritime safety net in which the ship owner is the most important member." They say their inspection of the Prestige last May was a limited one, and that it was the ship owner's responsibility to inform them of any problem. >> (speaking Spanish) >> SCHAPIRO: Menendez says it won't be easy.

They are battling powerful forces in the maritime system. >> (speaking Spanish) >> SCHAPIRO: Meanwhile, the only one the Spanish are prosecuting is Captain Mangouras. In jail, one of the captain's few visitors was Jose Manuel Ortega, a maritime union official who believes Mangouras is being singled out unfairly. >> (speaking Spanish) >> SCHAPIRO: Ortega says the people most responsible for the Prestige disaster are protected by the way the system works.

>> (speaking Spanish) >> SCHAPIRO: There are still 150 aging single-hulled vessels like the Prestige at sea. After the disaster, the European Union banned them from entering their ports, but they can't control international waters. Mayor Mouzo is furious that not enough has been done to protect the Galician coast. >> (speaking Spanish) (waves crashing) >> SCHAPIRO: The Prestige lies 130 miles off this coast.

Some days, its oil still washes ashore. The Spanish and French have sent submarine robots down to the shattered vessel. Two miles below the surface, the ship's rusted hull still contains 13,000 tons of oil. They use the robots to seal the leaks. One day, they hope to extract the remaining oil. Above this graveyard, along the Costa del Muerte, the oil tankers keep passing. ♪ ♪