This is our Chernobyl, admits Spain, as huge slicks appear

Spain has finally acknowledged the scale of the disaster unleashed upon Europe's western seaboard, more than three weeks after the tanker Prestige started spilling toxic fuel oil off the Spanish coast.

"The Prestige is our Chernobyl," the public works minister, Francisco Alvarez Cascos, admitted this weekend. Two new mile-long slicks have risen from the sunken tanker, which is still leaking 130 miles west of Spain, Mr Cascos conceded, after weeks of insisting the opposite. These patches are thicker and more toxic than the filth which has already engulfed the Galician coast, and which returns with every tide to re-pollute beaches cleaned up hours before.

The Spanish government lumbered into action only when neighbouring France and Portugal sounded the alert, alarmed at finding themselves on the front line of impending disaster. Yesterday it was revealed that the Spanish army had repeatedly offered men and equipment to help Galicia's regional authorities cope with the emergency, but had been told they were "not necessary".

The clean-up of sludge-coated beaches, and the removal of advancing slicks still at sea, is overwhelmingly being organised by village fishing guilds whose heroism and improvisational genius have earned widespread admiration and put Spain's rulers to shame. Offshore winds have helped the villagers and 10,000 volunteers who flocked this holiday weekend to the rugged coast to stop toxic fuel invading the rich mussel beds of the Rias Bajas. What they call their ecological and social Maginot line has held. But capricious winds could shift and drive the deadly sludge back to Spain, France and Portugal.

The Portuguese Prime Minister, Jose Manuel Murao Barroso, visited the coastal town of Caminha on the Spanish border on Friday to inspect barriers, clean-up plans and wildlife protection measures orchestrated by the Portuguese Defence Ministry. "We are prepared," he said. "From the start our authorities have provided information that has always turned out to be true."

When the Prestige sank on 19 November, France's horrified President Jacques Chirac called urgently for "severe, draconian measures against rust-buckets". France declared a state of alert along its western coast, and sent anti-pollution boats to tackle slicks now 60 miles from its shores. Meanwhile, Spain's Prime Minister, Jose Maria Aznar, has yet to visit Galicia.

In the village of Cangas in the Ria de Vigo, women quoted ironically the local refrain: "Don't marry a blacksmith/ Because he's hard to clean;/ Marry a sailor/Because he's washed by the sea", as they sponged down and cut free the tar-smeared overalls of weary menfolk returning from "fishing for fuel oil", as they put it.

"Politicians in Madrid don't care about the Atlantic coast. They're incompetent," said Enrique Pereira, 40, a deep-sea fisherman who had returned home the day before from four months on the high seas. He was improvising rope hoists and taping wheelie-bins to fishing boats in the hope of containing the slimy black stuff. "We collected these bins from nearby villages. We can't afford to drop our guard," he said.

Scientists agree. They say the government's theory that some 60,000 tons of fuel taken down by the Prestige would solidify on the seabed is wishful thinking.

"Eventually the tanks will corrode and burst open," warned Antonio Figueras, director of Vigo's Marine Research Institute "Everything will come to the top.

"After this black tide will come others, and sooner or later they'll wash up on shore. We mustn't hide the truth or give people false hopes. The worst is yet to come."