BARCELONA: Spanish navy specialists on Monday detonated an old explosive device dating back to the Spanish Civil War that had been found underwater just off one of Barcelona’s most popular beaches, police said.
The beach remained closed to the public on Monday, having been evacuated on Sunday afternoon after an off-duty police officer discovered the unexploded cannon projectile 25 metres from shore.
The shell, thought to date back to the 1936-1939 Spanish Civil War and contain 70 kg of the explosive TNT, was moved with floating devices one nautical mile out to sea and to a depth of some 40 metres, where it was successfully detonated, police said.
PILOT DIES IN CRASH
A military flight instructor died after his plane crashed on Monday at sea off the southeastern coast of Spain, authorities said.
The C-101 — the same aircraft used by Spain’s air force Eagle Patrol aerobatics team — was on a training flight when it crashed near the resort of La Manga, the defence ministry said.
“All my love to the family of Captain Francisco Marin, who died in an accident in La Manga,” Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez tweeted.
The defence ministry had said Marin, a flight instructor, had been “able to eject before the plane crashed in the sea”.
It is unclear what the cause of the crash was, or how Marin died.
A video filmed by a witness and posted on Twitter shows a small aircraft falling at a near vertical before trying to straighten up and hurtling into the water. — Reuters
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