POLEX 2026 exercise brings together around 100 professionals to combat marine pollution

Around 100 professionals took part in training and exercises during the National Marine Pollution Response Exercise, which concluded in Vigo after a successful event focused on strengthening cooperation and combining operational resources to improve the response to emergencies at sea.

The Directorate General of the Merchant Marine, in collaboration with Salvamento Marítimo under the Ministry of Transport and Sustainable Mobility, together with other organisations including the Port Authority of Vigo, the Galician Coastguard Service of the Regional Ministry of the Sea of the Xunta de Galicia, the Directorate General for the Coast and the Sea of MITERD and EMSA, among others, took part over three days in the National Marine Pollution Response Exercise — POLEX 2026. The exercise was highly successful, bringing together a large number of professionals specialising in maritime emergencies.

At the closing ceremony, the Director General of the Merchant Marine, Ana Núñez, stated that “Galicia knows well what it means to deal with an emergency at sea. It has extensive maritime, naval and fishing activity and has experienced difficult situations. It also has its own Coastguard Service. It is therefore a particularly suitable place to test how we work together, since improving the coordination and management of maritime emergencies is an obligation for everyone, and this exercise has been an excellent testing ground for cooperation and the deployment of resources.”

Núñez thanked all the organisations involved for their collaboration and invited them to work together again at the next POLEX, which will take place in Cádiz in 2027.

The Regional Minister for the Sea, Marta Villaverde, also highlighted the importance of Galicia’s maritime sector and stressed that “we must always be prepared to act in a coordinated and effective manner, as our fisheries resources and coastline are an invaluable heritage that we want to protect. POLEX, which addressed an emergency involving hazardous materials and an oil spill, was not just another simulation; it was a genuine full-scale exercise, which was successfully completed.”

Meanwhile, Salvamento Marítimo’s Director of Operations, Evangelina Díaz, explained that “at Salvamento Marítimo, we know from experience that, in emergencies of this scale, the operational coordination we are responsible for, under the direction of the Directorate General of the Merchant Marine, can only be truly effective if we are able to combine capabilities. Plans, procedures and resources are essential, but ultimately it is people who make the entire system work.”

The President of the Port Authority of Vigo, Carlos Botana, also stated that “for us, environmental sustainability and operational safety go strictly hand in hand. Being prepared for scenarios as complex as those practised in recent days, in environments of incalculable value such as the Atlantic Islands of Galicia National Park, reaffirms the absolute commitment of the entire port community to excellence and the protection of our marine environment.”

The exercise forms part of the training programmes and exercises established under the National Maritime Plan, approved by Order FOM/1793/2014, with the aim of improving the response to both port emergencies and marine pollution incidents through the coordination of the organisations and personnel involved.

For the first time, POLEX included a port emergency exercise affecting port waters, involving an electric vehicle on board a vessel, as well as a marine pollution incident that required activation of the National Maritime Plan at Level 2, the PIM at Level 3 and the Camgal Plan at medium level.

Over two days, more than 20 maritime and aerial resources from Salvamento Marítimo, the Port Authority, the Coastguard Service, MITERD (the Ministry for Ecological Transition) and the European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA) were deployed in the Vigo estuary. The area became a major operational exercise zone involving firefighters from the Government of Catalonia and Ferrol, Maritime Captaincy safety inspectors, pilots, tugboats, civil protection teams and State security forces, among others.

A first training day was also held, featuring more than a dozen speakers.

Federico Navarro, National Coordinator for Marine Environmental Protection at the Directorate General of the Merchant Marine, stated that “we have worked seriously within the crisis committees and have made progress in developing cooperation models for managing maritime emergencies with Port Authorities and the Coastguard Service of the Regional Ministry of the Sea.”

This National Exercise is one of 22 marine pollution response exercises that have been carried out along the Spanish coastline so far this year, organised by Maritime Captaincies and Salvamento Centres. The objective is always the same: to improve the emergency response system through training and coordination.

It is also a way of preventing incidents, since the more effective the response, the lower the severity of emergencies. According to Salvamento Marítimo statistics, the number of such incidents is also declining each year: in 2025, there were 75 vessel-related environmental emergencies, almost 25% fewer than in 2024, when there were 99.