In an recent article, Bechtel and Hainmueller (2011) find significant effects of voter gratuity by looking at the case of the flooding of the Elber river in Germany. As the authors acknowledge, this is a case in which the government not only reimburses its citizens but also does a very good job in managing the crisis. This paper poses a more difficult test for the voter gratuity It examines how voters electorally respond when a government delivers a poor performance, but buys voters off with monetary transfers. We study the case of the 2002 oil spill off the coast of Galicia (Northwestern Spain) after the sinking of the Prestige oil tanker, where the government was partially responsible for the spill, but was very generous with the aftermath compensations. Using data from municipalities affected by the oil spill, we evaluate whether the incumbent conservative party was either rewarded or punished in the subsequent national and local elections. Our design makes it relatively straightforward to disentangle the role of vote buying from performance voting. We show that municipalities characterised by a previous pattern of support to the incumbent party respond differently to those that traditionally supported the opposition parties.