In Palamares, in Andalusia a village of just over a thousand souls, someone has left much more than a memory. In their skies there was a continuous succession of military planes, at 10 in the morning. In particular, two military planes of the US Air Force, like two swallows, flew high, touching and approaching, carrying out a quick contact and then leaving, each on his own way. It was a punctual, daily appointment, so much so that the peasants who work in the fields used the arrival of the two planes like a clock.
On January 17, 1966, however, the two aircraft, the distances walked badly, collided and exploded the thousand pieces. In the clash, four nuclear bombs fell from the planes by stuck in three in the land and one ending up at sea, in a trail of flames and smoke.
The two US aviation aircraft brought, respectively nuclear and fuel material: that operation in flight, in fact, which punctually attracted the attention of the inhabitants of Palamares, was of refueling, called Chrome Dome operation, a military mission in action at 1961 At 1968: military aircraft monitored the territory, always remaining in the air, ready to thwart attacks or attack the Soviet Union.
In the middle of the Cold War, and while Francisco Franco’s heel crushed with the Sisters Fascist regime Spain, there were still no spy satellites or intercontinental rockets, capable of hitting Moscow in a short time. And it was so pleading.
The construction of the Spanish soil of American military bases based on the agreements with El Caudillo dates back to the 1950s. Madrid had granted the Yankee the Areo space to operate undisturbed. And the Iberian peninsula began a happy era of economic well -being, opening the doors to tourism from northern Europe and the United States.
Fortunately, the bombs had not been triggered, otherwise they would unleash a seventy power more powerful than those released on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In short, a tragedy. However, no one wounded in the accident. A bomb reached the ground helped by a parachute, while the other two disintegrated to the ground, releasing dangerous plutonium, in the area and earth. And, on the other hand, that organizing an emergency plan to protect the population, the Franco government, put everything silent, but the news traveled from the radiogyornals of France and the United Kingdom who dedicated a lot of time to the accident, denouncing the cover -up of the regime And the helpless inhabitants of Palamares, learned of the dangerous devices planted in their city.
The Spanish newspapers, especially the local ones, told of a curious operation of the American military to remove some ton of contaminated land and grass, while as many as thirty ships and four US submarines worked in the search for the nuclear order finished at the bottom of the sea, before that The Russians could identify it. Thousands of military employed in the recovery operation, but they were not the ones who identified the exact point in the bottom of the sea where the bomb was placed: it was a simple fisherman in the area, Francisco “Paco” Simó Orts, who had seen the bomb falling Two steps where he was fishing. Paco immediately became the national hero, the Savior not only of Palamares, but of the entire Spain. Franco promised him a cash prize and a new fishing boat. However, as they subsequently reported on relatives, to the poor fisherman of the bomb, a good nothing entered the pocket. Save the waters, the danger of the contamination of the plutonium that had spread in the air remained. Plutonium, a highly radioactive element, if not reclaimed, over time turns into a Americio and inhaled affects the nervous system causing genetic deformations into future babies. The Municipality of Palamares denounced the neglect of the American military in cleaning and reclaiming the area, considering that the area is beaten by a strong wind.
Time passed and the history of the Palamares bombs ended more and more in the oblivion, held well hidden in order not to frighten tourists, in a country that lives on a substantial GDP from the hospitality sector (Spain from the early eighties, has passed by number of tourist presences Italy). And, even today, at a distance, almost sixty years from the accident, the radiation are present in 50 thousand cubic meters of land.
This forces the inhabitants of the area to continuously undergo medical exams to monitor their health, especially by those who work in the fields and those poisons are more exposed.
To date, there is no study with data on the effects caused by the plutonium on the population of the area and since the eighties there is a long legal dispute between Madrid and Washington on the failure to recall those land. The Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez seemed to have reached an agreement with the administration of Joe Biden, now we have to start again from scratch, hoping that the newly crowned president Donald Trump shows himself available to this small Spanish village, which has become, not by his fault, a fault, a Dangerous Cemetery of nuclear waste, a heritage of the Cold War.