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Mr. González Navarro turned around and sped home to check that his house was not hit. He later drove back to where he had seen debris land and found an undetonated bomb attached to a parachute. He cut off the straps of the parachute and took them home, along with some work tools and bolts that he found scattered on the ground.

“I was just thinking about what objects might prove useful,” he said. “I liked fishing, and those parachute straps, thin but very solid, were clearly perfect to be turned into a weight belt for diving.”

Like many in Palomares, Mr. González Navarro, now 71, figured he had witnessed a military air crash. But he was unaware that a United States Air Force bomber and a refueling jet collided, accidentally sending four hydrogen bombs hurtling toward Palomares. Although no warheads detonated, two of the bombs shattered, spreading plutonium over the village.

Whereas American service members are complaining that the hurried cleanup effort carried out by the military jeopardized their health, many in Palomares lament the damage the accident has done to their community.

“Living in a radioactive site that nobody really has wanted to clean has brought us a lot of bad publicity and has been something hanging over our head like a sword of Damocles,” said Juan José Pérez Celdrán, a former mayor of Palomares. For years after the crash, local tomatoes, lettuce and watermelons did not carry any Palomares label because of the stigma associated with the place.

And the cleanup effort continues half a century later.

In 1966, American troops removed about 5,000 barrels of contaminated soil after the accident and called the cleanup complete. But about a decade ago, the Spanish authorities found elevated levels of plutonium over 99 acres. Some of the areas of elevated radioactivity almost touched private homes, as well as fields and greenhouses. Scientists from Ciemat, the Spanish nuclear agency, fenced off the most hazardous sections and began pressuring the United States to remove about 65,000 cubic yards of radioactive soil — far more than was removed right after the accident……..http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/21/world/europe/spain-palomares-hydrogen-bombs.html?_r=1