In the Autumn/Winter of 2002 the most dramatic and heroic page in the history of Galicia was written. Thousands of anonymous men and women rushed to clear away, with their hands or with the most rudimentary tools, the tonnes of thick fuel oil that were destroying the Galician coast. The Prestige tragedy had begun. The dimensions of the catastrophe are still difficult to evaluate. The main objective of the documentary “THE WOUNDED COAST” is to discover the impact and the consequences of the oil spill. In the following months, beaches and cliffs were affected by the oil slick, threatening the delicate ecological balance of Galicia, one of the areas of the world richest in marine biodiversity. We will see how the layers of fuel oil affect the photosynthetic process of the flora, and how the fauna of higher levels suffer the consequences. Among birds and cetaceans, levels of mortality were high. We will go to rehabilitation centres to see the work with species covered in petrol, some of them as fragile as the common guillemot of the Sisarga islands. The cleaning work of the thousands of volunteers who came from every corner of the country, however, had knock-on effects. In reality, the shovel excavators, the trucks and the water-jet cleaning machines were, involuntarily, placing in danger the biodiversity of the reeds, dunes and cliffs where they worked. Finally, the scientific community began the work to evaluate and mitigate the effects of the fuel oil on the affected marine and coastal ecosystems. We will see, step by step, the research initiatives of different scientific communities and institutions. For this, we will follow the procedures of work groups along different parts of the coast and in the area where the petrol tanker sank. The Marine Sciences teams of the Universities of Santiago de Compostela, Vigo and La Coruña will inform us of the condition of the rocky and sandy sea beds, the inter-tidal areas and beaches, indicating the level of contamination and whether the fauna and flora have been affected. On board different vessels, we will follow the process of sample collection by divers, nets and dredges, which will subsequently be lyophilised in the laboratory and subjected to chromatic examinations in order to determine the presence and concentration of hydrocarbons. At the same time, we will find out about the bio-remediation works that the Scientific Research Council has been carrying out on the island of Sálvora, in the Atlantic Islands National Park. There, chemical solutions are applied with bacteria and fertilisers whose basic food is fuel oil. This technique was already applied in the disaster of the Exxon Valdez petrol tanker and we will learn of its conclusions. We will go the first centre of world reference in the analysis and evaluation of contaminants in the marine environment. From Brest, its director, Michel Girin, will give us detailed information on the conclusions of the Prestige disaster. We will also find out about the experiments carried out in the “poludrome”, a special type of tides and currents tank where the fuel of the Prestige is assessed in order to know its composition and behaviour in the sea. On board the ship “Cornide de Saavedra”, of the Spanish Oceanographic Institute, we will visit the site of the sunken ship, 250 km from the coast, in order to determine the level of fuel in the water column and follow the works of pumping out the oil and encasing the ship. On this campaign, we will coincide with the oceanographic ship of the Spanish Navy, the “Hesperides”, which will be carrying out seismicity works in the area of the shipwreck. “THE WOUNDED COAST” will be narrated by Mariano Lastra, professor of Inter-tidal Ecology, who will explain to camera, in a rigorous but accessible manner, the problems of the works in course, the uncertainties and hopes. The scientific supervision of the documentary will be the responsibility of the professor of Animal Biology of the University of Santiago de Compostela, Victoriano Urgorri. To understand the true scope of the oil slick from the Prestige, and the threat still represented by the sunken ship, that will be the final aim of the documentary “THE WOUND