Galicia, Spain

Orbit 35419 Frame 2738 12 February 2002 16:31 GMT

The autonomous region of Galicia, extreme northwestern Spain, just north of Portugal, is imaged here.
Large industrialised cities and some major ports can be found in Galicia. Its communities, however, are mostly small, rural villages living on fishing, farming, or forestry.
To the left: the coast, characterised by deep fjord-like tidal inlets known locally as "rias", interspersed with sandy bays and rocky headlands attracting a lot of tourists in Summer time.
Top right, on one of those "rias", and on the west edge of the Bay of Biscayne, lies La Coruña, seaport (from which the Spanish Armada sailed against England in 1588), fishing centre, and also industrial area for shipbuilding, metalworking and tobacco processing.
The capabilities of SAR onboard ERS-1 and 2 satellites to detect and monitor environmental disasters were demonstrated in 1992 already, when right in this area a huge oil spill caused by a tanker occurred.
Bottom right: Ria de Muros. To its right: Santiago de Compostela, the major place of pilgrimage for the Roman Catholic Church since the 9th century (Santiago being the Spanish name for St. James, whose bones were reportedly discovered here).
Image bottom edge: Ria de Arousa, an inlet not reached by the Atlantic Ocean's strong currents (see the calm water surface imaged by SAR).

* On 3rd December 1992 the Greek oil tanker "Aegean Sea" carrying 79 tons of crude oil broke up near the entrance of La Coruña harbour. It exploded and released all of the oil into the sea.

Click on the thumbnail image to see a higher resolution version of this image; a very high resolution image, 1972 x 1992 pixels, 1689190 bytes, is also available.

Keywords: ESA European Space Agency - Agence spatiale europeenne, observation de la terre, earth observation, satellite remote sensing, teledetection, geophysique, altimetrie, radar, chimique atmospherique, geophysics, altimetry, radar, atmospheric chemistry