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The Spanish Chernobyl
an counterpart at the G20 conference, where he raised the subject of Sánchez’s imprisonment.
He also referred to the successful release of fellow Spanish prisoner Ana Baneira, a 25 year old backpacker who returned home to A Coruña on Thursday, March 2.
Sánchez was arrested last year after going missing during a backpacking trip where he hoped to reach Qatar in time for the World Cup.
He was detained for photographing the tomb of 22yearold Mahsa Amini. The young woman was killed by Iran’s ‘Morality Police’ for not wearing a veil, which sparked protests and unrest in the country.
THE Spanish government is calling on the US authorities to remove the radioactive earth that still remains in the small Almeria town of Palomares following the nuclear accident of 1966.
Under a 2015 agreement, the North American Energy department pledged to clear 50,000 cubic metres of earth contaminated with half a kilo of plutonium from Palomares and transport it to the Nevada desert for its disposal.
But nothing has been done yet, and the hazardous waste still remains at the site of the January 17, 1966 plane crash, when two US Air Force planes collided during an inflight refuelling operation and dropped four thermonuclear bombs over the area.
Although none of the bombs exploded, they did leak an estimated three kilos of plutonium into the land, of which half a kilo still remains, making Palomares one of the six most radioactive towns in Spain.
This has led the town and neighbouring Villaricos, grouped together under the Cuevas de Alman zora municipality, to be burdened with a stigma that the local authorities are desperate to eliminate.
Regular radiation tests are still carried out in the area, with residents required to have regular health checkups and large plots of countryside fenced off behind nuclear hazard warnings.
