A Spanish court has established the huge amount of compensation to be paid for the Prestige disaster in 2002.

The 1976-built tanker broke in two and sank off Galicia while it was being towed away from the coast, spilling more than 50,000 tonnes of crude that reached beaches - the Iberian peninsula's worst environmental disaster.

AFP reported that the A Coruna court awarded the Spanish government EUR 1.573bn