When the oil tanker Prestige sank in November 2002, there was not just a black tide of oil that hit Muxia, ground zero of the oil spill. In the months following the event, the small fishermen’s town was also engulfed by press, politicians, and thousands of volunteers that turned the disaster into a social and political phenomenon.

This video focuses on the volunteer movement as a product of society. It traces the consequences of the Prestige oil spill on civil society, from its effects on life in Muxia, a small fisherman’s town in Galicia, through to its political significance in Spain, and concluding with its repercussions on European level, as experienced in the political machinery of Brussels. Combining testimonies from different perspectives, it plays out the tensions that exist between individual and collective motives, and maps the incongruities of a movement that has to operate on a local as well as on a global level.