[1] The oil spill polluted 2300 kilometers (1429 miles) of coastline[2] and more than one thousand beaches on the Spanish, French and Portuguese coast, as well as causing great harm to the local fishing industry.

In 2007 the Southern District of New York dismissed a 2003 lawsuit by the Kingdom of Spain against the American Bureau of Shipping, the international classification society which had certified the Prestige as in compliance with rules and laws, because ABS was a "person" per the International Convention on Civil Liability for Oil Pollution Damage and exempt from direct liability for pollution damage.

In January 2016 the Spanish Supreme Court held the London P&I Club liable for damages up to the amount of its overall cover for the shipowner for pollution of $1 billion.

The Greek captain, Apostolos Mangouras, reported a loud bang from the starboard side and as the ship began to take on water from high waves the engines shut down and he called for help from Spanish rescue workers.

The Filipino crew was evacuated with rescue helicopters and the ship drifted within 6 kilometres (4 mi) of the Spanish coast, already leaking oil.

[1] After pressure from the French government, the vessel was forced to change its course and head south into Portuguese waters in order to avoid endangering France's southern coast.

[3][4] The decision to tow the damaged tanker offshore rather than escort to a sheltered anchorage has been described as a criminal act and the reason why such a large area was polluted.

[5] With the French, Spanish, and Portuguese governments refusing to allow the ship to dock, and after several days of sailing and towing, it split in half on 19 November 2002.

[6] After the sinking, the wreck continued to leak approximately 125 tonnes of oil a day, polluting the seabed and contaminating the coastline, especially along the territory of Galicia.

In the subsequent months, thousands of volunteers joined the public company TRAGSA (the firm chosen by the regional government to deal with the cleanup) to help clean the affected coastline.

The massive cleaning campaign was a success, recovering most portions of coastline from not only the effects of the oil spill but also the accumulated "regular" contamination.

[citation needed] The massive environmental and financial costs of the spill resulted in an inquiry into how a structurally deficient ship was able to travel out to sea.

A previous captain in St. Petersburg, Esfraitos Kostazos, who complained to the owners about numerous structural deficiencies within the ship was rebuffed, later resigned in protest, and rather than repairing the defects, he was replaced with Mangouras.

[1] The ownership of the Prestige was unclear, making it difficult to determine exactly who was responsible for the oil spill and exposing the difficulties in regulations posed by flags of convenience.

[6] The World Wildlife Fund's senior policy officer for shipping Simon Walmsley believed most of the blame lay with the classification society.

According to the ABS classification society, the fact that it took 6 days for the ship break-up and sink in heavy sea is "proof positive that the vessel was not in a substandard condition".

[7] Plan Galicia was a set of economic measures adopted by the Spanish Council of Ministers on 23 January 2003, in an attempt to mitigate the consequences of the Prestige disaster.

Bringing the ship into port and booming around her to contain the leaking oil would have been less harmful than sending her back to sea and almost inevitable sinking.

[12] In May 2003, the Kingdom of Spain brought a civil suit in the Southern District of New York against the American Bureau of Shipping (ABS), the Houston-based international classification society which had certified the "Prestige" as "in class" for its final voyage.

The harbor master of A Coruña at the time, Ángel del Real, and a Galician government delegate, Arsenio Fernández de Mesa, had also been charged with "aggravating the disaster by ignoring technical advice".

[16][15] In November 2013, the three Galicia High Court judges concluded, it was impossible to establish criminal responsibility, and captain Apostolos Mangouras, chief engineer Nikolaos Argyropoulos and the former head of Spain's Merchant Navy, Jose Luis Lopez, were found not guilty of crimes against the environment.

[18] On 26 January 2016, Spain's Supreme Court convicted Mangouras of recklessness resulting in catastrophic environmental damage, and sentenced him to two years in prison.