Prestige y 11-M : la vertebración política de la gestión de catástrofes

Abstract

Between 2002 and 2004 Spain was jolted by two big crisis scenarios with a very different nature but two common characteristics. On one hand, they required an immediate response of some magnitude and complex management. On the other, they both caused a very deep impact on Spanish society and politics. Such two characteristics made them especially interesting in order to analyzed multiple aspects related to decisionmaking and “first response” management as a reaction against catastrophes. We can also withdraw several lessons about which factors and criteria are employed by critical actors to evaluate crisis management and “first response” as successful. This article focuses on the lessons learned by analyzing two singular events occurred in Spain and partly associated to very Spanish civic culture keys and political dynamics. At the same time, both of them have similar features and iconic meaning to other more recent crisis occurred in other places around the world. The first case studied is the crisis provoked by the accident of the oil ship “Prestige”, drawn in November 2002, 130 miles away from the Spanish coast in Galicia. It poured around 64.000 tones of oil in the Atlantic Ocean. It provoked a huge ecological disaster mainly in Galicia though to a great extent it reached 2.500Kms of coastal line, from the North of Portugal to the South of France. The second one is the terrorist attack of March 11th, 2004 in Madrid. A cell of Islamist terrorists linked to Al Qaeda made explode simultaneously ten bombs in train stations and suburban trains in four different locations. More than 1.600 people were injured and 191 were killed. The analysis of crisis management success criteria and factors is framed in two competitive research projects 1 . Three different qualitative research techniques are employed: (a) interviews to critical actors involved in crisis management; (b) semistructured questionnaires addressed to key informants; and (c) four workshops, composed by experts, managers and decisionmakers involved in Prestige Oil Spill and M11 crisis. The method used is an original and renewed version of the Nominal Group Technique (NGT). The application of these techniques was complemented with the information obtained out of other sources such as official reports, press releases, articles and specialized monographs and some results of the inquiries carried out by the Spanish Center of Sociological Research (CIS)