ESHS/HSS Annual Meeting

Swims in Palomares and Strawberries in Athens: Or, How to Get Away with a Nuclear Accident

• In Event: The Palomares Nuclear Accident (Spain 1966) and Its International Impact

English Abstract

In this paper, I explore the multifaceted impact of the 1966 Palomares nuclear accident on Greek public life, focusing on how the Palomares swim—this striking performative act—circulated culturally during the Cold War and how it resurfaced unexpectedly after the Chernobyl disaster. I first trace the ways Palomares entered Greek social and political discourse in the late 1960s and 1970s, not only through the press but also through music, satire, and political caricature. As I show through examples such as Mikis Theodorakis’ song and illustrations in satirical magazines, the Spanish accident became a powerful symbolic vehicle for articulating Greek anxieties about American military power, nuclear danger, and broader Cold War tensions. I then examine the legacy of Palomares in Greece by analyzing how its strategies of reassurance reappeared two decades later. During the Chernobyl crisis, members of the Greek Atomic Energy Commission publicly consumed strawberries, a fruit widely rumored to be contaminated—an act that, as I argue, directly echoed the dramatic “public swim” staged in Palomares. In essence, I argue that the Palomares performance illuminates how scientific authority is co-produced with political spectacle, and how local communities become sites where global nuclear anxieties are negotiated. The Palomares performative act thus offers a powerful lens for understanding how states, experts, and publics jointly construct “safety” in the face of invisible contaminants—making it a crucial case for grasping its broader transnational resonances in the history of science.

Author

• Loukas Freris, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg