Concerns linger over oil spill effects

A YEAR ago, towns and beaches near here were awash with toxic fuel from the Prestige oil spill.

Now, the area appears to have undergone a miraculous facelift. While the Spanish government is openly optimistic that the worst has passed, residents and environmentalists were not so sanguine.

"When I saw this beach last year, my heart sank. But I never thought I'd see it so clean so quickly," said Emeritus Romar Casal, a 45-year-old housewife and one of thousands of workers, volunteers and soldiers who has spent most of the past year scouring the region clean. "But if you ask me," she said, while scraping filthy tar off rocks one by one with a plastering tool, "it's neither as clean as some say nor as bad as others would have it."