The Environmental Prosecutor's Office opens proceedings for the dumping of plastic pellets on the beaches of Galicia

The specialized Environmental unit of the State Attorney General's Office has opened proceedings this Monday for the dumping of pellets of plastic that affects almost the entire Galician coast and has already reached Asturias, as reported by Cadena SER and confirmed by this newspaper. Sources from this organization explain that on January 4, a follow-up file was opened and that now proceedings have been initiated to verify the scope of this spill, its origin and determine whether it may lead to criminal liability. Meanwhile, the political anger is growing just over a month before the Galician elections: the Xunta de Galicia and the central government accuse each other of not acting quickly; The Galician Executive says that it did not receive official communication until January 3, while the Minister of Transport says that this communication occurred 21 days before.

According to the Prosecutor's Office's letter, the pellets “contribute to microplastic pollution”, the reduction of which “constitutes an objective for the European Union.” Furthermore, the text recalls that article 325 of the Penal Code provides that “shall be punished with prison sentences of six months to two years.” […] which directly or indirectly causes or carries out emissions, discharges […] in terrestrial, subterranean or maritime waters, including the high seas.” For this reason, “a proposal is formulated for authorization to initiate pre-procedural investigation proceedings due to the existence of a special significance in these events that is justified by opposite extremes.” The Prosecutor's Office considers that the materials “show signs of toxicity” and “are not biodegradable.”

Despite this, the Xunta does not currently plan to raise emergency level 1, activated due to the arrival of these pellets, which are a component for manufacturing plastic. It will not decree level 2 until it has more information about the real situation of the polluting tide, a necessary requirement to open the door to intervention by state media. Meanwhile, the president of the “blatant campaign” with this environmental problem.

Rueda complained this Monday about a “lack of information” and contradicted the Government regarding the first contacts between administrations over the pellets. “The first official communication we have is from January 3,” she noted. In response, the Minister of Transport, Óscar Puente, has shown on his “Since that day, it is unquestionable that the Xunta is aware of the existence of this spill. On its coasts,” said Puente. The Government delegate in Galicia, Pedro Blanco, has also defended this version: “On December 13, 112 of the Xunta alerted Salvamento Marítimo of the appearance of a sack of pellets on the coast. From that moment on, the Xunta is aware of the situation, since 112 is a service of the First Vice Presidency.”

Sources from the Xunta continue to indicate that they do not plan to raise the level of environmental alert, unless they receive new information from the Government of Pedro Sánchez. They admit not knowing what is in the sea or what is to come and, in this scenario, they recognize that they are worried about not knowing how to react, since, as they have stated, They are cleaning without knowing what is in the sea. “What it is about is collaborating,” defends the president of the Xunta, but “the thing is that we don't have the information, it's that they have the information. How many containers fell into the sea? What did they take? What can we expect?” Rueda has refused to “start discussing municipal powers” and “who has to clean the beaches, which are the town councils.” “We will provide the necessary means, we will admit all the necessary help and whoever wants to help, let them help. If not, then he should come to an agreement with his opposition parties in Galicia and let them continue campaigning,” he challenged.

The president of the Xunta admitted this Monday that he is “concerned” about what happened on the eve of the Galician elections because he understands that the left-wing parties “from the first moment went into electoral campaign mode.” At the opposite pole, he has placed the situation of the autonomous Executive, which has to “govern” and “manage.” “We are trying to solve the problem by sizing it appropriately, but for that we need information,” he insisted. “If others want to campaign and, come on, they are doing it shamelessly, then that's up to them. In the end, people are not stupid either and realize who is working,” he warned.

“The responsibility lies with the Xunta”

The Minister of Transport, Óscar Puente, – on whom maritime transport also depends – stressed this Monday that the “responsibility at this moment lies with the Xunta de Galicia, which is the one that should have activated the appropriate protocols, which until now on the 5th he didn't do it.” In a thread by X he explained the chronology of the spill: “Mr. Rueda knows or should know about the existence of a spill of pellets of plastic since December 13 of last year, the date on which it was sighted by an individual on Espiñeirido beach, which reports to Galicia's 112 (service managed by the Xunta). Since that day there have been calls to 112 by people and institutions that have sighted remains on the coast. Are Mr. Rueda not informed of these events? Doesn't anyone on his team know what's happening?

And he continues: “On the 20th, after the appropriate investigations, the Xunta was informed of the ship from which it came, with a Liberian flag and a German shipowner, which lost six containers. Only one contained pellets of plastic. The event occurred on December 8 of last year in Portuguese waters. What is the Xunta doing about it? It declares the emergency situation level 1 (the minimum) on January 5 and on the 6th it mobilizes Tragsa to cooperate in cleaning the affected coasts. For the Ministry for the Ecological Transition to act, a level 2 declaration is required. That is, between December 13, 2023, the date of the first sighting of pellets of which there is evidence and on January 5, 2024, the Xunta de Galicia does nothing.”

Puente also offered an interview this Monday on Cadena SER: “I listen to Mr. Rueda talk about elections and the electoral use of things. Man, the first person to make electoral use of things is the one who does not tell the truth, the one who says that he has not been provided with the information. “Who places the responsibility somewhere other than where it should be.” In addition, it has detailed the actions carried out by the central government, which has “put in place a satellite tracking service”, has “made air expeditions” and is “in permanent contact with the fishing fleet in the area”, which ensures that at the moment there is no evidence of pellets in water. “As long as they are on dry land,” in the words of Puente, “it is the town councils and the Xunta de Galicia that must proceed to their withdrawal,” unless the Galician Executive activates alert level two, which would empower the Ministry for the Ecological Transition to cooperate in the collection.

The first parliamentary representative to go down to the arena was, last weekend, Ana Pontón, national spokesperson for the Galician Nationalist Bloc, the first opposition party in Galicia. This Monday, the candidate
for the Xunta for the BNG has reproached the PP for repeating the “crisis of the pellets” the “tide of lies, manipulation and incompetence” of the disaster of the Prestige.

The spill reaches the Asturian coasts

The polluting substances have also reached the Asturian coasts. The Minister of Development, Local Cooperation and Fire Prevention of the Principality, Alejandro Calvo, activated this Monday the Territorial Contingency Plan for Accidental Marine Pollution (Placampa) and the regional Executive has “immediately” enabled a withdrawal and management device. of waste in coordination with the Asturian Federation of Councils, according to the Efe agency. This Monday, the brigades will begin to remove any plastic waste that may appear during this episode to prevent its dispersion into the natural environment or its entry into the food chain. The Government of Asturias is “in constant communication” with those responsible for the Ministry for the Ecological Transition and the Demographic Challenge to observe the evolution of the episode and establish, if necessary, additional collaboration mechanisms.

The container ship Toconao, flying the flag of the African country of Liberia, lost several containers, at least six, with various merchandise that fell into the sea from the deck of the ship on December 8. “We sent a boat from the captaincy to check if the containers were adrift, but we couldn't find anything,” explained the Portuguese commander Rui Miguel Serrano da Paz, reports Tereixa Constenla. In the following days, the Portuguese coast did not receive suspicious spills that could be related to the incident of the Toconao, although Captain Serrano da Paz assures that they were not informed of the content of the merchandise lost by the ship.

One of the containers was supposedly loaded with 1,000 bags of 25 kilos each of a petroleum product, according to the raffia bags that have appeared, a “UV stabilizer” of the type “UV 9000”, intended to improve resistance. of objects made of plastic. The first bags were seen by people walking along beaches in the Barbanza region (A Coruña) on December 13. The white balls of this substance have since arrived with the tides to beaches throughout the autonomous community and the cleaning work is falling mainly, for the moment, on self-organized volunteering that has emerged through social networks.

The chemical product that litters Galician beaches has recently awakened a movement of solidarity and volunteers similar to Never Again. With the difference that this time, and bridging the gap with the catastrophe of the Prestige For 21 years, social networks have existed and help bring volunteers together to organize. Hundreds of individuals armed with kitchen strainers, sieves and improvised grates made from fruit boxes or fryer baskets have launched themselves into the Galician sandbanks since Saturday to sieve the sand, strain the water from the shore, to clean it of the millions of tiny balls of a still unknown compound whose toxicity is unknown, intended for the manufacture of countless plastic objects.

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