On December 8 at 4:45 a.m., the General Directorate of Natural Resources, Security and Maritime Services of Portugal issued a statement sent to Spain, Portugal and the European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA). It reported that the Toconao ship had lost six containers off the coast of Viana do Castelo on the same day it occurred, a month ago, and days before the first pellets began to arrive on the Galician coast, starting the tide. white plastic that also arrived in Asturias on Monday and this Tuesday in Cantabria.
The report sent by Portugal, to which this newspaper has had access, confirms that the central government was aware of what was happening days before what it acknowledges. On Sunday, officially, the Executive of Pedro Sánchez reported that on December 13, the emergency service 112 of the Xunta de Galicia alerted Maritime Rescue that a person reported the appearance of a bag of plastic pellets on the coast and that until seven days later, on December 20, he did not know that they came from Toconao.
The Ministry of Ecological Transition passes the ball to the Ministry of Transport and clings to that first official version provided by the Government Delegation in Galicia, which talks about the call to 112 on December 13, when they began to reach the coasts of Ribeira bags full of plastic pellets and scattered pellets.
“The first alert that the Government receives comes through the Xunta, specifically the services of 112 of Galicia, which are the ones who communicate the first information to the Ministry of Transport and Sustainable Mobility,” they indicate. However, this communication from Portugal denies everything, evidencing a lack of information that the Xunta de Galicia has been reproaching the central Executive for days.
The Government’s version is that, as a result of the investigative work carried out, the Finisterre Maritime Rescue Center concluded on December 20 that the Toconao ship could be responsible for the arrival of pellets, but, according to this report from Portugal, it was not No investigation was necessary, but the authorities of the neighboring country already confirmed to Spain what was happening on the same day that the six containers were lost. One of them was transporting 1,050 25 kilo bags of pellets.
The controversy is also still alive over the way in which the Government informed the Xunta de Galicia. The official version of the central Executive is that on December 20, as soon as it learned that the microplastics came from Toconao, the person in charge of the Maritime Rescue Center informed the deputy director of the Coast Guard service, an organization dependent on the Department of the Sea of the Xunta de Galicia , that these bags probably had that origin and that the Government was already making arrangements with the assembly company to confirm.
According to the Government, it was already the second time in which the Xunta was aware that pellets were arriving on its coasts and of the probable responsibility, on this occasion through Maritime Rescue, and before through 112 on the 13th. However, the Galician Government denies that this information was communicated to them on the 20th and assures that this communication did not occur until January 3, through an email that Salvamento Marítimo sent to the Coast Guard.
Already on Sunday, January 7, the Minister of Ecological Transition, Teresa Ribera, reported directly to the Galician president, Alfonso Rueda. Thus, sources from the Xunta de Galicia indicate that she telephoned him 15 minutes before the official presentation of Rueda as the PP candidate for the regional elections on February 18. It had been almost a month, 30 days, since Portugal had informed Spain.