The dumping of millions of plastic pellets that spread across the beaches of Galicia after the loss of up to six containers by the Tuconao ship in Portuguese waters has already become a cause of confrontation between the central governments and the Xunta a little more one month before the regional elections in that community that will be held on February 18.
The Minister of Transport and Sustainable Mobility, Óscar Puente, has accused the Xunta and its current president and candidate for re-election, Alfonso Rueda, of lying and “doing nothing” since December 13, the date on which there was the first sighting that an individual reported to 112, until January 5, which declared a level 1 emergency situation (the minimum) and mobilized the public company Tragsa the next day.
Accusations to which Sumar, a government partner of the PSOE, has joined. His spokesperson and Minister of Culture, Ernest Urtasun, assured this Monday that his party is studying “reporting the Xunta to the Administrative Condense for lack of action.” The argument that the confederal space is working on focuses on the alleged “non-compliance with the Decree that regulates the Territorial Plan for Marine Pollution Contingencies.”
Minister Puente has thus responded to Rueda’s words at a breakfast organized by Europa Press in Madrid in which he criticized the lack of information from the central government to the Xunta, that “the first communication” on the matter by the Executive arrived on January 3, has indicated that the Government “has just appeared” and has regretted the electoral use of the crisis.
The head of Transport, in an extensive thread on of Liberian flag and German shipowner who lost six containers of which only one contained plastic pellets. In this sense, sources from the Executive maintain that the head of the Fisterra Maritime Rescue Service informed the deputy director of the Coast Guard Service of the arrival of plastic pellets to the Galician coast on December 20 at 6:30 p.m., after the loss of the container from the Toconao ship, an event that occurred on December 8 in Portuguese waters.
Puente in his thread regrets that until January 6, the Xunta did not mobilize Tragsa to cooperate in the cleaning of the affected coasts and remembers that for the Ministry of Ecological Transition to act, a level 2 emergency declaration is required and not 1 as activated the Galician Executive. That is to say, Puente concludes, between December 13 and January 5, the the autonomies that it governs”. And he reiterates that the Government “cannot act if it is not claimed through the activation of emergency level 2.”
On the other hand, the minister also explains that the Government, “within its powers, has carried out and continues monitoring via satellite and with scheduled aerial surveillance that concludes that the waste is not in the sea or coastal waters, and is found in land where we can only intervene at the request of the Xunta”.
The first vice president and Minister of Finance, María Jesús Montero, has expressed more caution, stating this Monday that the Government, through the Ministry of Ecological Transition, works “side by side” with the Xunta to respond to the spill.
In an interview with TVE, Montero stated that “from the first moment we had communication, the Ministry of Ecological Transition made itself available to the Xunta for referral, reinforcement with all the means they considered appropriate so that a aggravation of the situation that was being perceived.”
“Unfortunately, this reminds us all of images from the past that we definitely want to erase. Hopefully we have the ability to arrive on time with all those means that, I insist, we have made available to the Xunta de Galicia, which is the one that has to coordinate the tasks.” so that this situation is controlled,” Montero stressed in an allusion to the Prestige spill in Galicia, which does not sit well with the Galician Executive.
“We do not have information, they have not yet given it to us, how many containers fell into the sea and what they contained,” said the president of the Xunta in Madrid, who has guaranteed that the Galician Executive will collect “everything that reaches the beaches, we will provide the necessary means and whoever wants to help should help and whoever doesn’t should continue campaigning, but not get in the way.” In his opinion, “it is not normal that whoever can tell us that we do not know today, even so we will act as we are doing, using all the means at our disposal,” he insisted.
On the other hand, the Rueda Government is concerned about the unknown quantity of pellets that could reach the beaches and the ability to react, while comparisons with the Prestige tragedy have been bothered by talk of effects on fishing or that the left uses the spill as an element of confrontation in the electoral campaign.
In statements following Rueda’s intervention at this information meeting in Madrid, sources from the Xunta de Galicia have told EFE that they do not plan to raise the level of environmental alert, unless they receive new information from the Government. The regional Executive has also defended the safety of the material that has reached the coasts and has also pointed out that it was Maritime Salvage that received the notice about the loss of the cargo by the shipping company, and did not alert the regional administration.
