On 13 November 2002, the single-hulled oil tanker Prestige suffered an accident in a storm while carrying 77,000 tonnes of heavy fuel oil off the Costa de la Muerte in north-west Spain. After several days of manoeuvring to move away from the Galician coast, it sank some 250 km from it. The spillage of the cargo caused one of the largest environmental catastrophes in the history of navigation, both due to the quantity of pollutants released and the extent of the area affected, an area stretching from northern Portugal to the Landes in France. The episode had a particular impact in Galicia, where it also caused a political crisis and a major public controversy.