Palomares After the Fall

Before the bombs, this was the best place in all Spain. Nobody bothered us. Nobody even knew about us; we had no tourists. We had plenty of work, but when the crops were in we could say: "There's a bullfight in Madrid? Good, let's go to Madrid." Since the bombs fell, we've had one disaster after another. The water has gone bad. The orange trees have dried up. The tomatoes don't grow. I don't blame the bombs for everything. I don't blame any body. But life has gone from here. Within a few years, this village will be empty. The face of Jose Flores Gomez is creased from 60 years of weather and laughter and, when he speaks, his dark eyes dance as though amused. Don Pepe, as friends call him, is not amused when he ponders the past and the future of his home, the Andalusian coastal village of Palomares. Last week, as he and his fellow villagers celebrated the feast day of their patron, St. Antony the Abbot, they also marked the third anniversary of the day when the bombs fell on Palomares.

Over the coast that morning in 1966 a U.S. B-52 bomber on a routine nuclear patrol collided with the Strategic Air Command KC-135 tanker that was refueling it. Wreckage rained on Palomares, including three unarmed hydrogen bombs. A fourth bomb fell into the sea. There were no deaths or serious injuries among the villagers, but a U S. airman mumbled in schoolboy Spanish after parachuting to safety: "Ustedes todos muertos [You're all dead]." Because two bombs' casings had cracked, several thousand airmen and sailors spent 44 days carrying away almost six acres of topsoil and plowing under 600 acres more to dispel any traces of lingering radioactivity.

The masked and gloved strangers have long since departed, but they left some mementos behind. Four Geiger counters run continuously, and a villager is paid $66 a month to take daily readings. Other towns will buy no milk, produce or meat from Palomares, despite government assurances that the goods are untainted. Half of the town's 2,000 people have left for jobs elsewhere.

Six Successive Failures. Situated far off the coastal highway, Palomares was never a tourist attraction. Only a single road is paved. Entertainment consists of two bars and a movie theater that shows old films on Thursday nights, Sundays and holidays. Still, Palomares was a singularly prosperous town. As its lead and silver mines, discovered by the Phoenicians, finally petered out over the past 30 years, the miners were given severance pay in land instead of pesetas. Pride of ownership and an abundance of sweet water from deep wells coaxed from the arid land the best tomatoes in all of Almeria province. Since the bombs fell, the tomato crops have failed six successive times. Palomarenos blame radioactivity, but the failure may well be due to other causes. Drought has turned Palomares' water brackish. and the plowing three years ago apparently brought old salt deposits to the surface.

On an anniversary visit last week, TIME Correspondent John Blashill discovered that the village is becoming resigned to failure. But eyes flash when townsmen talk about the U.S. Air Force. They concede that the U.S., which promised to leave Palomares "just the way we found it," was generous with emergency payments for food, clothing and shelter. When 644 damage claims were later filed, they add, the Air Force and the Spanish government turned from Midas into pinchpenny.

A Question of Honor. Some claims, to be sure, were exaggerated. The fishing captain whose sighting helped in the recovery of the bomb from the sea demanded $5,000,000; he got only medals from two grateful governments. Francisco Alarcon Cano, whose private school was shuttered for six weeks because a bomb fragment landed on his patio, sought $733 in lost tuition. He got nothing. "We may have made a mistake," says a 16th Air Force officer of the schoolmaster's case. "But the door is always open if he wants to come back." The point that escapes the Americans is that Alarcon, and others like him, will not come back. When the Air Force questioned what Alarcon considered an eminently reasonable claim, it might as well have questioned his honor.

So far the U.S. has paid out $700,000 on 528 claims that originally totaled $7,839,519; another 98 claims were rejected and seven were simply dropped. Eleven are still outstanding. "I think that's very generous, considering how these people live," says one officer. "I would even say overgenerous." Even so, the U.S. apparently feels that something more is still owed. Washington has offered to donate a $150,000 desalinization plant to the village for drinking water. With plenty of coffee, wine and cognac on hand, Palomares wants a bigger unit to provide water for irrigation. The plant in any case is yet to be built; the Spanish government, which owns a nearby beach-front inn where the drinking water is also brackish, has decided to build a large plant to serve the entire area. Meanwhile, to pacify Palomares, the government unaccountably decided to build a tennis court.

The court has no net and its lines are improperly painted, but that hardly matters. "Nobody here has ever played tennis," says Don Pepe Flores, a hint of amusement in his eyes. "We've never even seen anyone playing tennis."

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