The event took place at a time when tourism had scarcely begun in the eastern part of the province of Almería. One sunny morning, the 16th of January 1966 to be exact, over the skies of a small village called Palomares, by the mouth of the Almazora river, a giant US Air Force B-52 bomber loaded with four hydrogen bombs, crashed into the refuelling aircraft it had approached in order to refuel . The refuelling aircraft , badly damaged, managed to reach its base in Seville, but the B-52 bomber, immediately after its crew members had parachuted out, broke apart, scattering four atomic bombs down onto the fields and coast. The military authorities, American of course, sealed off the area and began the search for the nuclear devices. Three of them were soon found in among the tomato plants, but, what about the fourth one? The fourth one could not be found. The most sophisticated search teams with up to the minute equipment, including a small bathyscaph, arrived, but the bomb.........the bomb still did not appear. It needed Francisco Simó, an honest fisherman from the nearby village of Aguilas, to arrive on the scene before it was finally found. Francisco (Paco) Simó, (known from then on as “Paco, the Bomb Man”) had been fishing quietly from his boat not far from the shore when the sky had exploded over his head and he had seen a heavy metal object, suspended from two parachutes, plunge into the sea near his boat and sink. So it was thanks to him that the bomb was located and, after painstaking effort, retrieved.
The final touch to this story was put by the then Minister of Information and Tourism, Mr. Manuel Fraga Iribarne who, to prove the purity and safety of the sea water at Palomares, went for a swim accompanied by the then US Ambassador to Spain, Mr. Angier Biddle Duke. That was the time when weapons of mass destuction visited Eastern Almería.

Bartolomé Afinar

Note. An undoubtedly malicious rumour later spread that the famous swim had actually taken place at some completely different and distant beach, perhaps Marbella.
Nothing could be further from the truth: As the web surfer can observe in the attached pictures, there can be no doubt that it is the coast of Palomares. “Render therefore unto Ceasar the things which are Ceasar´s”.....