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The Prestige

Muxía, Fisterra, A Coruña

1 Villages · 7 Monuments · 4 Nature · 1 Activities · 3 Curiosities · 2 Historical milestones · 1 Food and drink

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The Prestige

Historical milestone · Muxía, Fisterra, A Coruña

Image of Muxía, not of the place itself.

The single-hulled tanker Prestige, carrying 77,000 tonnes of heavy fuel oil, sent out its distress call on 13 November 2002 off this coast, in the midst of a storm; after several days of manoeuvres to move it away from the Galician coast, it broke apart on the 19th and eventually sank about 250 kilometres from the Costa de la Muerte, spilling tens of thousands of tonnes of fuel oil. The spill affected 2,000 kilometres of Spanish, French and Portuguese coastline and is considered one of the greatest environmental disasters in the history of shipping, with a clean-up cost then estimated at 12,000 million dollars; it also had a particular political impact in Galicia. Muxía was one of the concellos hardest hit by the oil slick.

noviembre de 2002

Photo: Luis Miguel Bugallo Sánchez (CC BY-SA 3.0)

What to see and do in Muxía