The survivors of the fishing boat that sank in the Falklands are now in Spain

The six Spaniards who survived the sinking of the fishing boat Argos Georgia The sailors who sank in the Falkland Islands last Monday landed at around 1pm in Santiago de Compostela on Sunday. The sinking of the ship cost the lives of nine people, including two Spaniards. Another four sailors are still missing, two of them from Galicia: Juan Antonio García Rey, engine room assistant and a native of Ribeira (A Coruña), and Antonio Barreiro, from the town of Noia, also in the A Coruña region.

The Airbus A330 of the 45th Air Force Group of the Spanish Air Force chartered by the Government to repatriate the crew of the fishing boat landed at the Santiago Military Aerodrome at around 13:00. Four of the surviving Spanish sailors disembarked from it, one of whom was treated by members of the Aeroevacuation Medical Unit (UMAER).

At around three in the afternoon, the aircraft took off for Torrejón Air Base (Madrid) with the other two Spanish scientific observers and seven foreign sailors of different nationalities who also managed to survive the shipwreck. They were accompanied by a diplomat from the Consular Emergency Division. The repatriation is the result of an operation coordinated by the Ministries of Foreign Affairs, Transport, Agriculture and Fisheries and Defence.

At the military airfield in Santiago de Compostela, next to the Rosalía de Castro Airport, the relatives of the survivors were waiting this morning. The reunion took place inside the facilities, which the media were not able to access. The delegate of the Government in Galicia, Pedro Blanco, the president of the Xunta, Alfonso Rueda, the councillor do Mar, Alfonso Villares, and the mayor of Ribeira, Luis Pérez.

The bodies of the two Spaniards who died in the shipwreck – César Acevedo, a resident of Vigo and the boat’s fishing captain, and Santiago Leyenda, a native of Baiona (Pontevedra), the boat’s cook – have not yet been able to be repatriated due to the protocols of the British authorities, who plan to transfer them to Oxfordshire for autopsies.

As for the four missing at sea (two of them Spaniards), the search and rescue operation is continuing, involving a ship, a fishing boat and a plane. The waves in the area reach eight metres and winds blow at 35 knots. The crew of the sunken longliner was made up of ten Spaniards, eight Russians, five Indonesians, two Uruguayans and two Peruvians.

The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, has celebrated the return of the survivors with a message on his official X account and has thanked the medical team and the staff of the Ministry of Defense for their “extraordinary work” in bringing them “back home”. The President of the Xunta has also shared the news on his social networks: “All our support and affection for the families of the victims of the shipwreck of the Argos Georgia. We celebrate your arrival”, wrote Rueda.