A 300-metre-long tourist cruise ship moored in the Spanish port of Palma de Mallorca collided with an oil tanker on Sunday due to strong winds.
ADVERTISEMENTNo serious injuries were reported, the Balearic port authority said.
The ship was carrying thousands of British tourists who were preparing to disembark in the middle of the storm.
The strong winds – of around 120 kilometres per hour – hit the island of Mallorca and broke the moorings of the Britannia cruise ship, pushing it to the other end of the dock until it collided with the Castillo de Arteaga oil tanker.
“A small number of people suffered minor injuries and are being treated by the ship’s medical centre,” a spokesman for P&O Cruises, which owns the Britannia cruise, said in a statement.
“To allow our technical teams to carry out an assessment, Britannia will remain in Palma de Mallorca this evening, with entertainment and activities planned on board.”
One of the people who witnessed the incident captured the scene in a video that has gone viral on social media.
“What a mess. The wind blew the cruise across the harbour like straw. It crashed into the wall and that stopped it… Because if it hadn’t, it would have been blown away,” said the man in the video.
As a result of the collision, the tanker suffered a hole in its hull on the side of the quay, but no oil was spilled into the sea.
Palma’s fire brigade and port police were immediately mobilised.
After a week of intense heatwave across Spain, a storm of rain, wind, gales and hail is battering much of the country, especially in the east, the Balearic Islands, Catalonia and Valencia, which are on orange alert (high risk) this Sunday and have already caused several incidents.
