7:15 WEB DIARIO

SATURDAY June 7. Lariño beach. Carnota. Gallery 3.

Second Saturday in Lariño, Carnota. As you can check in the picture gallery this place was in the same condition as the Saturday before. On a place like this it takes a long time and a lot of hand to make any progress. As said before, less people were coming after the elections and consequently the Volunteering Office got commands from the Administration to stop sending groups. Therefore this would be our last day together as a whole group. From then on it’s up to us if we want to go somewhere and clean. Gallery 3.

THURSDAY June 5. Basoñas beach. Porto do Son. Gallery 5.

Another day in Porto do Son, again in Basoñas beach. Basically we did the same job that we did the week before, only that this time we were discouraged by the fact that the Volunteering Office had informed us that the cleaning activities would be over on the following Saturday, in other words, that this would be our last Thursday together and we wouldn’t come back to clean again. On the picture gallery related to this day you will be able to see the stones that we found next to the beach. They were on a rocky area but we weren’t allowed to work there. In turn we had to content ourselves with digging and sifting sand. We consider that the government should use sifting machines instead of getting the volunteers exhausted with that job. We would rather like to work with rocks or at least places with more fuel to pick. Gallery 5.

SATURDAY May 31. Lariño beach. Carnota. Gallery 2.

South of Carnota there’s a place called Lariño, with a lighthouse and a small beach. To enter the beach we had to cross a row of big stones. They had fuel on top and beneath so we had to move the stones with iron bars to get to the sludge underneath. It was mixed with sand but because of the heat it was melting, shining as if it was fresh. Of course it smelled so hard that we had to use the masks and protecting glasses to prevent the fuel from splashing into our eyes. Many of those stones looked clean on the surface but once they were upside down they showed the fresh, pure and toxic sludge stuck to the base. Gallery 2.

THURSDAY May 29. Basoñas beach. Porto do Son.

First “volunteering day” after local elections all over Spain. The results weren’t as satisfactory for us as expected. Many people felt deceived and betrayed at the sight of the outcomes that favored some of the politicians that were responsible for the catastrophe. Consequently the number of volunteers decreased after the elections. Anyway, we worked on the dunes, digging and sieving until 3 o’clock.

SATURDAY May 24. Serreseco coves. Carnota.

This time the volunteers worked in two groups. One of them went to a cove called Serreseco. There they worked with small stones covered with fuel. They had to scrape the sludge off the stones and then throw them ashore so that the waves would wash them thoroughly. Unfortunately the weather was bad and the volunteers had to cope with rain and even hail.

THURSDAY May 22. "O Rostro" beach. Finisterre. Gallery 4.

On our comeback to Finisterre we could check out one more time how much fuel there’s still coming ashore in the “Costa da Morte”. Actually the fuel seems to be stuck inside “O Rostro” bay, on the seabed, and is continuously coming in and coming out as the tide comes and goes. As we entered the beach from the North we could already feel the acid smell of the fuel on the air. We could perceive again the wide bulge in the middle of the beach where the fuel lies. It reminded us of what happened on May 3rd when we worked so hard on that spot. Unfortunately we weren’t provided with any shovels or any other tools to dig so we could only pick fuel balls from the shore. Gallery 4.

SATURDAY May 17. Razo beach. Caión.

This day the volunteers went to the North Coast of Galicia. They found a dry layer of fuel buried on Razo Beach, Cayon, near Carballo.

THURSDAY May 15. "As Furnas" beach. Porto do Son. Gallery 5.

It had been a long time since the last time we went to Ribeira. At first we thought there might be something fishy going on but in the end everything turned better than expected. Even the Tragsa staff were surprisingly kind to us. “As Furnas” is a wide beach in “Porto do Son”. Behind the dunes there’s a sort of corridor, like a river bed. The slicks had found their way through that canal and were now buried in layers under the sand. We worked in groups. The ones in the front line moved forward digging until we met the dry petroleum layers buried about 50cm underground. They were 1 or 2 cm thick. We tried different ways to remove it. The most effective one was: first digging 50 cm of sand with a shovel and even with the hand, carefully in order not to tear the layer in pieces. Then remove the sand away from the layer with a brush or with our hands. We did so over a wider surface to measure the extension of the slick. Then we removed the layer with our own hands trying to gather as much as we could each time. We did our best not to break it up. Anyway, the next groups would come after us to sieve the sand so remove the small pieces of dry fuel that still remained on the ground. Finally we gathered 5 tons of fuel mixed with sand only that day. Gallery 5.

SATURDAY May 10. "Boca do Río" dunes and marshes. Carnota.

It was just another boring day picking up fuel grains and little balls from the sand with our own hands. It’s a fiddly job that should be done by machinery. If only we were given sieves to do it. There was oil sludge mixed with clay and earth polluting the marshes too. The army was on the other side of the lagoon working in groups, sifting the sand and shooting some documentary for TVE (the public TV channel that supports the Government). They were all marked FAS (Armed Forces) on the back. They didn’t want us messing with them as the Volunteering Office Staff said. We continued working until 4 o’clock, long after the army had left, and came back to Carnota and Lira where we met some of the volunteers who had been there performing recycling labor.

THURSDAY May 8. "O Rostro" beach. Finisterre. Gallery 6.

Third day in “O Rostro” beach, southside. The Army was still installed in the Sports Hall. The tide was high but falling so by the moment we had to “content” ourselves with picking up fuel grains from the sand until the tide should be low enough as to be able to work on the shore. We were longing to go back to the place were we had been working the Saturday before. Around 2 o’clock in the afternoon two of us strayed away from the group and headed for the center of the bay, to the spot said above. On our way there we met thousands of fuel balls brought by the low tide. They became bigger as soon as we reached the center of the beach. We picked up what we could but then decided to go back and ask for help. The group came and we all worked grabbing the fuel from the water. We couldn’t dig in the sand because we didn’t have any shovels, it was too late for that and there weren’t enough big bags. As we were working a radio reporter from Cadena SER approached us and interviewed us. Gallery 6.

SATURDAY May 3. "O Rostro" beach. Finisterre.

We came back to “O Rostro” beach in Finisterre (“Land’s End”) just 3 days later. That week the tide was in around one or two o’clock in the afternoon. When we arrived at the beach the army was already working in the middle of the bay. They were a big group, twice or thrice as much as we were. Their coveralls were quite dirty. From the distance we could notice a lot of activity going on, not necessarily work. They had many baskets and shovels, most of them inactive, and three big bags filled with oil sludge and sand, around 6 tons altogether. As we approached them we found many sludge balls by the shore. They contain sand and so they look just like black granite rolling stones with gray dots. They rang in size from tiny grains up to balls bigger than a grown-up hand. They became bigger as we reached the working area. We all started picking the up as soon as possible. In the meantime, two of us grabbed a shovel and started digging in the sand near the shore. He found a huge amount of sludge down there and urged us to stop picking the balls and lend a hand. We did so and started digging in that place. We dug 50 cm of sand and met a 30 cm layer of fuel-oil, sometimes pure, brown and thick and sometimes gray and sandy, like concrete. We dug on the sides and noticed that it stretched in all directions. It was amazing to find something like this 6 months after the sinking of the Prestige. I’d like to mention that we worked with we tide coming in behind us, so the urgency was even stronger and we had to hurry on. We dug a 10 meters long trench and we couldn’t go any further in two hours because we were only between 30 and 40 volunteers. We shoveled sand into a pile on the side. Then we shoveled the fuel into the baskets and repeated the same process back again and so on. We filled a basket with 2 or 3 shovelfuls of fuel and each of them was really heavy. I had heard several times before that the caterpillars had dug in the sand early in the morning and gathered 10 tons of fuel, but I’d never been myself in something like that before and it’s impressing. After 6 months we had seen many things but we all expected to find less fuel each day. We worked very hard for two hours, taking turns now and then to rest, drink and breathe a little bit of fresh air away from the trench for the stench was very strong and it was a sunny and warm day by the way. We worked for 2 hours and a half but we didn’t have enough baskets for all the fuel which was down there, besides, we had got only 6 big bags and the tide was already high around 2 p.m. The caterpillar came constantly to pick the Army’s big bags but ignoring ours. There was also a camera man from TVG shooting the army’s work. Once the tide was in the Army left but we stayed a little bit more until a manager from Tragsa came and told us to stop because the caterpillar driver was about to finish his working day and wouldn’t come to pick any more bags. We collected 6 tons of fuel and sand altogether and ended up exhausted, but feeling frustrated at all the fuel that we had to leave down there because of the tide. But we felt rewarded and self-fulfilled anyway with that intense experience, so different to those days when the only thing that we can do is picking tiny grains of fuel from the sand.

WEDNESDAY April 30. "O Rostro" beach. Finisterre. Gallery 6.

The Army was still occupying the Sports Hall in Finisterre. Down in “O Rostro” beach, south side this time, a man from Tragsa told us what was being done on the beach. In the middle of the beach there were big balls of fuel coming in with the tide and a layer of fuel buried under the surface. But the tide was higher and higher and we could only work there for a while. Part of the group stayed on the rocks at the southern end of the beach. Those rocks were covered with fuel-stained seaweeds and they were very easy to remove because both the weeds and the fuel were wet and fresh and detached from the surface of the rocks. We started removing them until a manager from Tragsa came and urged us to stop doing so, claiming that there wasn’t any fuel round there and insisting that we would better leave that place and head for somewhere else. So we left the rocks and went to the sandy area near the dunes. There we could only pick up tiny grains of fuel from the sandy surface with our own hands and without the help of any machine of sieve. It seems that the Government and Tragsa were trying to get us bored and stop volunteering. As we were working two journalists from Tele 5 approached us and interviewed some of us. Tele 5 is the only TV channel in Spain that remains independent to tell the truth. Gallery 6.

THURSDAY April 24. Touriñán Cape. Muxía.

Two weeks after our first visit to Muxia the Army were already gone from the town and from the Fish Marketplace. There were only left two women in the kitchen, two volunteers from abroad and the master of the fishing guild. The girls from abroad, who had been working with us two weeks before, told us how they were yelled at by the locals when they demonstrated against the measures taken up by the Government, that is, the withdrawal of the army from the town, the statement from Aznar saying that the Galician coast is completely clean and the premature removal of the fishing bans meaning that the sea is unpolluted, which is false. The master of the seafarers was really downhearted for all this. He was receiving phone calls from Universities outside Galicia and had to tell them not to come because he couldn’t guarantee any accommodation for them since the Sports Hall, the tents and the Fish Marketplace were about to close down. On our way to Tourinan Cape we could see people from Tragsa cleaning rocks with water pressure machines. The army wasn’t there anymore. In Tourinan Cape the scene was the same as two weeks before. I was working in the high part of the cove and the fuel was dry and mixed with the earth creating a thick topsoil that was ruining every root or plant that happened to grow there and got trapped on that polluted layer. It was a real wasteland. We had to rip off that layer to allow a better and unpolluted life to grow there.

TUESDAY April 15. Ximprón coves. Lira, Carnota.

The group was divided this day. Some were sent to the Ximpron coves in Lira (Carnota) and some were sent to Carnota beach, where TVE was filming some shots for the news, to support Aznar latest comments saying that the Galician Coast was already fully recovered from the slicks. No one could notice that there’s fuel in Carnota beach through the TV, but if you’ve been there you know that there are fuel grains all over, as it had rained fuel from the sky.

THURSDAY April 10. Touriñán Cape. Muxía.

Our first day in “Zona Cero”(Muxia), almost 5 months after the Prestige sent its first SOS here near this port. The same port promenade that we saw covered in black in those days glittered bright and clean just one month and a half before the elections. In this village people are divided between those who support the Mayor and the right party (PP) and those who support Nunca Mais, the civil association that demands urgent measures from the Government to be taken in relation to the Prestige tanker disaster. The fish market was still occupied by the Army and for welcoming and feeding the volunteers. In the outside 2 big tents were being set in order to lodge all the volunteers that were meant to come for the Easter holidays. The fish market was about to close and be reopened for the duties that it fulfilled before the disaster. Unfortunately, it was very unlikely that the seafarers would fish again as usual and thus the measure of removing the fishing bans would be very unfair. Anytime they went out to sea they came back with their fishing webs spoiled by the fuel. Inside the fishing market there were long tables and benches to serve meals to the volunteers, huge piles of food and lots of souvenirs from the volunteers that had gone there since November from all over the world. I can recall banners from Burkina-Faso and Columbia. We got ready and a bus took us to Tourinan Cape. From the road we could see some volunteers (from the Army I’d say) down on the beaches, cliffs and coves. In Tourinan Cape we went down to a cove black altogether. All the stones were covered in black and sticky fuel. The stones were so big that we had to move them with iron bars to get to the fuel underneath. Under the concrete ramp that went down the cove there was even more fuel. Some volunteers from Eastern Europe got in there to get the tar out. It was a hard day, cold and windy. We all used the masks as the fuel was too much and too fresh. A girl from Barcelona told us that there are 22 spots like that one around the Muxia area.

THURSDAY April 3. "Areas Brancas" cove. Carnota.

North of Carnota there’s a place of coves and short beaches. A volunteer fireman from Valladolid led us to a cove called “Areas Brancas” (“White Sands”) but those sands weren’t white at all. After many weeks working together and going everywhere and 5 months after the Prestige tanker accident, we were amazed at what we found there. There were lots of fuel everywhere but it was mingled with sand in a deliberate way. According to what the fireman from Valladolid said, the Army had thrown sand over the rocks so that when the waves would splash the stones, the mixture of sand and water would scratch the fuel away. However, it’s crazy to do so because that would be perfect if the stones had only a thin film of fuel on their surface, but not when there’s as much as there was between and under those rocks. Doing like that they only spoiled a lot of sand and made our labor even more complicated. So we did what we could and we spent 5 hours in the same spots where we started. We had to move stones by using iron bars in order to get to the fuel hidden underneath. We found pools of tar and we had to dispose of lots of polluted sand that would only be useful for making bricks. The reason why the sand was thrown there was most probably for concealing the effects of the slicks so that the fuel wouldn’t be detected from the planes and from the distance, just one month and a half before election all over Spain. We needed the masks for the stink was very strong and toxic. The fuel underneath wasn’t mixed with so much sand as the one on top. This time the fuel looked like chocolate cream, pure and viscous. We ended up exhausted but the women from Lira, Carnota cooked again for us and that built us up quickly.

THURSDAY March 27. "O Rostro" beach. Finisterre. Gallery 6.

The tide was high this week and so we couldn’t work between the rocks until the afternoon. We started in the sandy area but there wasn’t much to do there. Once we could enter the rocky area, we found quite a lot of fuel. It was fresh and viscuous, especially between the cracks in the rocks and the pools on the ground. Around 4 o’clock in the afternoon as every day in “O Rostro” beach when the tide goes out many balls of fuel with sand come ashore and many of us got soaked in the shore doing our best to pick that poison from the sea. We heard that early in the morning a caterpillar had removed 8 tons of fuel from under the sand, as it had already happened the week before. I remember having met volunteers from Granada and Coruna that day, and the Army (FAS) were settled in the Sports Hall in Finisterre. Gallery 6.

FRIDAY March 21. "Boca do Río" dunes and marshes. Carnota.

This day we were working in “Boca do Rio” an ideal spot in Carnota with marshes, dunes and lagoons on the back of Carnota beach. The work there consisted in picking up a variety of fuel pieces ranging from tiny grains up to biscuit-shaped pieces. The job was comfortable but never-ending for the sand was spoiled with fuel everywhere. It seemed as it had rained fuel all over the place. Basically we were meant to pick the fuel from the sand surface but we couldn’t help digging down a little bit and we found more and more down there. I wouldn’t recommend anybody to walk bare-footed over there. Some days later the University from Vigo tried a scanning machine in that beach and detected around 10 tons of fuel underneath the surface.

THURSDAY March 20. "O Rostro" beach. Finisterre. Gallery 6.

That day it was really warm and the fuel was melting down the rocks emiting gases. Over the rocks there was sand, presumably thrown by Tragsa workers to hide and conceal the fuel and the reality. The following day a caterpillar found a layer under the sand and recovered 8 tons of fuel. Gallery 6.

THURSDAY March 13. Traba, Laxe.

Our experience in Laxe was the other side of the fight against the fuel: the fight against the human walls that try to keep us from helping. It was a great disappointment especially for those volunteers that came that day for their first time. After a long and exhausting journey (over 3 hours) we arrived at Laxe bay. From the road we could see big black stones on the beach but not a sole volunteer besides us, not even a “Nunca Mais” banner all over the town. The town looked empty. There wasn’t any center to welcome us. It didn’t seem like a place where volunteers go very often. Some workers from Tragsa (a company that works for the Environmental Office in Spain) met us near the beach and handed us some stickers and handouts which stated that we were meant to “pick up fuel”, not to “clean beaches” so that it wouldn’t matter if the next tide should bring new slicks ashore. After that we were given the equipment, more fashionable and brand new than ever before. We had to get dressed on the street as we weren’t offered any covered place to do so. Down on the beach there was a trail of black grains left by the tide and now and then we met big piles of peat. According to the locals, them huge pieces of carbonized wood belonged to an old ship that had been delivering those remains ever since it sank down 40 years ago. In short, it wasn’t fuel from the Prestige tanker. It all seemed a cruel joke. Someone just made 47 people ride all across Galicia to clean a small town beach from some litter that must have been cleaned by the Council employees for the last 40 years. The buckets got filled very quickly and still there was so much peat to pick up, but the only caterpillar on the beach was unattended and we had to phone the driver to come and help us with the buckets. Facing this situation, we refused to keep working and demanded the manager from Tragsa to take us where the fuel was. First he recommended us to go to the City Hall and make a claim. Some of us went and the rest stayed in the port. Then Tragsa offered as an alternative, to take us in small groups to a beach called Traba, 5 miles away from the village. We had to go there by Police cars and Army trucks, but none of them showed any good will to take us there. We realized that the day was already spoiled since just a few of us could go to that beach. In Traba we found an Army tent, another truck and a stall that belonged to Tragsa. It’s funny that they were settled here, not in Laxe, where we were sent formerly. I guess that they keep the affected spots for themselves and send the volunteers somewhere else to anything unrelated so that we may come back home and say that there’s no fuel in the coast. Tragsa workers don’t like us messing around because we speed up the cleaning for nature’s sake and that would take their jobs to an end sooner than what they want. Anyway, we took the tools by the stall and headed for the cliffs. We descended down the cliff through a dangerous crack. Down there the fuel was black, dry, cold and very sticky, stuck firmly to the stones and the rocks. We had to scrape it off and through the stones to the water. We were only 15 down there and the rest of us couldn’t come and had to wait in Laxe for us to be back. The Army refused to take them to Traba with us. Back in Laxe we ate something and as soon as possible got back to Vigo. We’d like to stand out that the people from Laxe were really rude to us and had many prejudices about us. We felt so cheated and insulted there that we promised not to come back ever again.

SAT/SUN 8/9 March. Carnota.

THURSDAY March 6. Ximprón/Ardeleiro. Lira, Carnota. Gallery 1.

The atmosphere in Carnota is always kind and friendly and so was this day. There were volunteers from everywhere. We had a lovely weather all day though it was pretty warm too. Ten of us stayed at the recycling tent by the Sports Hall whereas the rest of us continued to Lira, a southern area of Carnota, where some coves and small beaches were dramatically affected by the oil slicks. A firefighter from Valladolid was volunteering there as a coordinator for the groups of volunteers that come to help. We followed him to a cove called Ximpron and he explained us the work to be done. Basically, we had to scrape the fuel out of the rolling stones from the ground as much as we could and then some men would take them into buckets to the shore. There they would throw the stones into the water to let the waves work the stones and wash the rest of the fuel off their surface. This time we had enough tools. Some of us worked on the rocks at the sides of the cove. A boy that was working there went dizzy because of the heat and the toxic fumes that sprang out of the rocks. The fuel was melting. You could see yellowish water flowing through and under the stones on the ground, mixed and dyed by the fuel. We stopped working around in the afternoon and started getting rid of the equipment. Then we were invited to have dinner at the dinning tent in Lira’s port (Carnota). The seafarers’ wives volunteer every day cooking for 500 people just for free, as their way of showing gratitude to the people from everywhere that come to Galicia to help saving the coast. Gallery 1.

FRIDAY February 21. "O Rostro" beach. Finisterre.

We left Vigo at 7:15 as usual and took the Atlantic highway to Padrón. Then we left it and headed for Negreira, crossing through mountains and prairies towards the coast. We met the ocean again in Cee, Corcubión Inlet and went on along the shore up to Finisterre (“Land’s End”). There we went through the Sports Hall where a group of volunteers from Orense had spent the night. The breakfast included Xmas nuggets and I remember several boxes with oranges from Levante for the volunteers. Then we picked up the equipment and came back to the bus that would take us the “O Rostro” beach. The Army was settled there with two tents and a helicopter. The volunteers from Orense were already working. We started working on the sand, picking up fuel grains with our hands. It was hard to do it without any tools, just with our gloves on. We were given just some brushes made of reeds from the dunes. But they were no good except for brushing the sand away from the grains. There wasn’t so much fuel and without the help of a sieve we worked really slowly. I was surprised of not seeing any living being among the sand, not even white bugs. A little further up by the dunes there was a little more fuel but basically it was about the same thing. So in the end we shifted for the rocks, where we found much more fuel. The rocks on the front and near the ground were dry and gray like concrete, but after being scratched we realized that it was a blend of sand and fuel-oil. In turn, the rocks behind were covered with fresh fuel. I recall some fishing webs soaked in fresh and black fuel that were trapped between those rocks. Some of our volunteers got a cutter and cut the most of the web that filled a whole basket. We were only given a few tools for this job, just some scrapers and tile-like pieces. We really needed the masks because the stench was quite strong, especially when we took the tar out of the rock cracks that had probably been closed in there for long.