Filed at 8:43 p.m. ET
MADRID, Spain (AP) -- Tens of thousands of people gathered in the rain
Wednesday in northwestern Spain to protest the government's handling of the
Prestige oil tanker disaster.
Some 150,000 people took part in the biggest demonstration in the fishing
port of Vigo, calling for resignations in the regional and central governments
and demanding laws to ensure such a spill never happens again.
Earlier Wednesday the government acknowledged problems in its handling of the
spill, which occurred when the Prestige broke apart and sank on Nov. 19,
spilling about 5 million gallons of oil, which has fouled miles of coastline in
a region heavily dependent on fishing.
About 15 million more gallons of oil, still in the Prestige when it sunk to
the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean, is continuing to leak, experts say.
As hundreds of volunteers cleaned beaches, Deputy Prime Minister Mariano
Rajoy said a shift in wind direction has made it inevitable that another wave of
slicks will hit the northwestern Galician coastline shortly, further threatening
one of the world's richest shellfish zones.
Rajoy said big slicks have broken into smaller ones, making it very difficult
for an international flotilla of anti-pollution boats to remove them.
The 26-year-old, single-hulled Prestige sank six days after it ruptured in a
storm and started leaking.
Rajoy appealed for help with the removal of oil from the surface of the sea.
``It's not possible for the big boats to pick up all this oil. We need all the
available fishing boats as soon as possible to fight the spill,'' he said.
A Spanish scientific commission said on Tuesday that the Prestige is spewing
33,000 gallons a day and could continue to do so until March of 2006. The tanker
is leaking oil from 14 cracks, nine in the bow and five in the stern.
Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar said the spill is the country's worst
ecological catastrophe. Spain had previously said the oil in the tanker would
solidify because of the near-freezing temperatures on the sea floor, some 2
miles below the surface.
