Disasters and public policy change. The Prestige six years on. Frame analysis

Abstract

Six years after its sinking, images of the Prestige remain etched in our memory: an overturned, leaking oil tanker losing part of its load and being towed out to high sea over the course of six days, during which time the tanker split in two and sank to a depth of 3,500 meters. The fuel reached the coast in several waves, affecting Galicia, Asturias, Cantabria, the Basque Country, and to a lesser extent, France and Portugal. Fishermen, shellfish gatherers, and thousands of volunteers took it upon themselves to prevent the worst consequences of the slick. Demonstrators gathered en masse in Santiago de Compostela? Never before in Spain had a disaster of this nature had such media, social, and political impact. What implications did this have for policies designed to prevent and combat environmental disasters? Did these public policies change as a result of this event? In this paper, frame analysis applied to public policy analysis is used to answer these questions. In other words, the paper analyzes the prevailing discourse regarding these public policies, how the problem is defined, what is identified as its cause, how the problem is situated geographically, to whom the problem and liability for it is attributed, what the proposed solutions are, what or who the targets of the policies are, the places at which these policies are aimed, and who should act to solve the problem. This analysis enables us both to conclude that the Prestige disaster did not bring about an essential change in Spanish public policies designed to prevent and combat marine oil pollution, and to draw lessons for improving the effectiveness of the public policies analyzed.