NEARLY eight years after an oil tanker broke up off the coast of Galicia with 77,000 tonnes of fuel oil on board, the investigation into Spain's worst environmental disaster has finally been completed, lawyers said on Tuesday.

Organisations representing 14,000 fishermen and others affected by the spill are demanding a nine-year jail sentence for the Prestige's captain, Apostolos Mangouras, and two other crew members, who are accused of committing “crimes against natural resources” and “disregard for the law”.

The ship's owner and insurer are being charged with “civil responsibility”, though they face fines rather than prison. The state counsel is also claiming 1.2bn euros in damages.

The prosecutor in the case, Alvaro Garcia Ortiz, said the investigation, summarised in 266,650 pages, had been formally completed on Monday. The 'mega-trial', as it has been called, is expected to take place later this year in La Coruna.

Under Spanish law, only individuals working for companies, not the companies themselves, may be put on trial.

On Nov 13, the Prestige sent out a distress call during a storm as it was passing the Galician coast en route from St Petersburg to Gibraltar. One of the tanks in the single-hulled ship was ruptured by the heavy seas, rendering the vessel unstable.

Helicopters evacuated 24 of the 27 crew. The captain was later taken off, arrested and released on bail. The authorities towed the ship out to sea, where it broke up and sank, continuing to leak oil.The inlets of southern Galicia are home to Europe's largest shellfish beds. Fishermen there loaded their boats with wheelie bins and scooped the oil from the sea with buckets. Further north, the rugged coastline, lack of resources and feeble government response made the clean-up operation difficult.

Thousands of people from all over Spain joined local people in scraping the oil from the rocks and beaches. The spill polluted thousands of miles of beaches, stretching from northern Portugal to the Bay of Biscay.

— The Guardian, London