Palomares, much more than the Fraga bathroom
Every morning around 10 two planes flew over Palomares, Almería. Every morning around 10, those two planes would get so close together that from the ground it looked like they were going to collide. They stood still for a few moments, very close together, and continued their course. For the pigeons that plane crossing ended up being almost like clockwork, they knew what time it was by looking at the sky. The January 17, 1966, those two planes really collided. The explosion made such a noise that it terrified the inhabitants of this neighborhood. The fireball in the air was followed by pieces of the accident plummeting to the ground.
Civil Guard in front of the remains of the American plane.
60,000 thousand liters of fuel burned suddenly, 125,000 kilos of aircraft debris fell in Palomares, miraculously, without causing damage to humans or buildings. Several parachutes escaped the destruction, four pilots survived and were rescued by residents of the area, by fishermen from Águilas. If on the spot, the accident created a shock. Far from there, in the Washington offices and in the Palacio de El Pardo, they panicked because they knew the truth: one of the two planes was a B-52 bomber carrying four atomic bombs 75 times more destructive than the one on Hiroshima. They had to be found.
The bomb found on the coast.
The tragedy could have been of magnitudes that it is better not even imagine. Years before Chernobyl, there were no comparisons. The two associated governments, the US and Spain, decided to shut up, to silence him. The former, so as not to alert their Soviet enemies; the second, to continue in the heyday of a country in full tourism boom.
Palomares: beach days and plutonium it is a series of four episodes (can be seen on Movistar +) that relives what happened in those 80 days between the crash of the plane and the discovery of the fourth bomb in the middle of the sea. 80 days in which the small town of Palomares lived with 1,600 American soldiers and with plutonium radiation, the particles released by two of the bombs that fell without a parachute and hit each other.
The documentary reconstructs the tragedy through the testimonies of witnesses and direct protagonists, such as Joe Ramírez and William B. Jackson, the first members of the American army to arrive in Palomares. EITHER Antonia Flores and Jose Manuel Gomez, residents of the town, who experienced the accident as children. There are also experts, such as the journalists Rafael Moreno and the American, Barbara Moran or Joseph Herrera, Palomar and "measured life dedicated to the accident".
José Herrera in front of one of the hydrogen bombs that fell in Palomares.
They also rebuild fictionalized scenes with actors and extras some scenes from the Almeria area. And through known archive images and some declassified and seen for the first time. "On the one hand, This story is too unbelievable to be true. If you tell it like a fictional story, no one would believe it." explains director Álvaro Ron. “And, on the other hand, it was very difficult to make a pure documentary, with interviews, archives, because there were many situations that the protagonists tell us about which there are no images and recreating them is an opportunity for the truth of the story to emerge that they are telling us, so that the spectator feels there”.
FRAGA TO THE WATER
55 years after the terrible accident, thinking of Palomares is still thinking of Fraga's bathroom. The then Minister of Information and Tourism dived into Quitapellejos beach, together with the US ambassador, Angier Biddle Duke, to show that there was no pollution there. However, reports of the contamination that the area suffered and still suffers from have never been clarified. At the end of this year, the Government should report it according to the ultimatum launched by the European Union.
On the beach, near Palomares.
Palomares was a Cold War conflict. A tragedy resulting from the anxiety in which the two world powers lived at that time: the US had several daily planes flying over the world, loaded with atomic bombs to respond to the USSR instantly in the event of an attack. The refueling of one of these planes in mid-flight, a routine task, revealed the unnecessary danger they were running. This is a story of intrigues, conspiracies, politics... and Fraga's bathroom. “I think that for the people who lived through this, this series is going to be a discovery”, insists Ron. "And those who did not live it are going to hallucinate that something like this could have happened."
To the rescue of the lost bomb.
But above all, says Ron, what you expect with these four episodes is "help the pigeons". “Put our grain of sand to let your voice be heard. If there is a reality and it is that they are very far from the capital, if this had happened in a more populated place, closer to where decisions are made, I am sure that other measures would probably have been taken, ”he says. And also insist that the stigma disappears for them, already tired of seeing journalists appear in their town every January 17th. “Palomares is a fantastic place, and Villaricos the coastal town, when we talk about contamination there are only two specific areas, but they are perfectly safe. And their products are also wonderful.”
'Palomares: Beach days and plutonium', Fraga, the bather.