In the early morning of July 15, 2021 we received a call you never expected. The fishing boat Maremibased in Santoña (Cantabria), had capsized nine miles from Cape Mayor (west of Santander). There were 10 crew members on board. Nine were saved. And there was a void in that account: my father’s. Nearly five years later, we still don’t have an answer. And the sea – that sea that gave everything – is also what keeps us in this wait that never ends.
Him Maremi – a 23-metre boat fishing for anchovies, sardines and chicharro – suddenly capsized while maneuvering to collect the tackle. The sea was relatively calm. There was no storm warning.
To date there is no definitive explanation why Maremi. The rescued sailors agree that everything happened “in a matter of seconds”, with no time to react. The possibility of a sudden shift of the load, an unexpected entanglement of the nets or a sudden imbalance during the maneuver was considered, but none of the hypotheses could be confirmed. The ship sank too fast and too deep to accurately reconstruct what happened.
They estimated they were in the water for half an hour in front of another boat, the That’s how it ishe saw four men clinging to an overturned red boat. Hearing his screams they activated the alarm which reached the Always at dawnthe nearest ship. My uncle Mariano Solano was on board. They rescued five other sailors, clinging to the caps of the nets. He pulled lives out of the water while searching, among those faces, for the one that didn’t appear: that of his brother.
My father, Fernando Solano, Nando to all, didn’t make it in time. He was 54 years old. Everyone on board was like a small family that had formed over time. They worked from Monday to Friday, although he also went to the dock on Sundays to check that everything was in order. He did his job with total dedication. On the refrigerator at home he had written the date of his retirement: he only had one year left. After a lifetime spent working at sea, he hoped for a break that never came.
After the sinking, an operation was launched with helicopters, boats and vehicles from various bodies: Helimer 222, Salvamar Deneb, the ship Maria de MaeztuGuardia Civil and Red Cross. For days they scoured the area by sea, land and air. A ship’s ROV robot was used Don Inda inspect the wreck at a depth of over 130 meters, an extremely difficult area. The search ended unsuccessfully on July 24. Thereafter only superficial surveillance remained. My father’s body never appeared.
Information meetings were held with the Maritime Rescue Service, the Maritime Captain and the local and regional authorities. However, there were moments of lack of information. On September 17 of that year, my mother and I attended the last meeting at the Ministry of Rural Development, Livestock, Fisheries and Food. That day I realized there was nothing left to do. Hopes were exhausted. There the search ended; silence began. The uncertainty led us to publicly ask “not to stop looking” and to request more technical means given the feeling that the device would shut down too soon.
My father’s passing has reopened old wounds in the local fishing community, especially when recalling the tragedy of New Pilinsank in 2004 with two sailors never appearing. And it wasn’t the only one: recent tragedies like that Pitanxo Villa —fishing vessel based in Marín (Pontevedra), sunk in 2022 with 11 missing— or that of Vilaboa Onewhich sank in 2023 off the coast of Cabo Mayor with two dead and one missing. Also in Galicia, in recent years, several smaller boats have capsized without all the crew being recovered. All these cases share the same pain.
Living in the open wound
Five years later, there isn’t a day that we don’t live with the same question: Where is he? Waiting becomes a lifestyle. You can’t move forward, but you can’t go back either.
Losing a neighbor, a friend, an uncle, a nephew, a father or a husband is always a blow that leaves a void in anyone’s life. But in the ports and in the brotherhoods there is an even deeper pain that almost no one talks about: that of those who lose a child at sea. There is no possible consolation for a mother left waiting for a return that never arrives. It is a wound that upsets the natural order of life, an absence that cannot be repaired and which, when there is no body, becomes a void that accompanies forever.
In the port there is a small monument with a plaque and a photo of my father. Flowers are left there and many people who loved him come there, but I know he is not in that place. This is the wound of disappearances at sea: not having a specific place to bring a bouquet of roses, no piece of land where you can feel at rest. That’s why every anniversary I drop a flower into the water. It is the only gesture that allows me to get closer, even symbolically, to the place where the sea has decided to hold it.
My father’s disappearance is not an exception on the Cantabrian coast: it is the silent example of a profession that lives with risk every day. At sea, an unexpected movement, a failed maneuver or the crash of a wave is enough for routine to turn into tragedy.
But what hurts most isn’t just the incident: it’s the way these stories fade from public debate as quickly as search engines shut down. For a few days there are helicopters, boats and newspaper headlines. After that, nothing. We families continue; the information agenda turns the page.
And an uncomfortable question remains: do we always search as far away as possible, or just the limit where it is customary to search? When a ship is more than one hundred meters deep, as happened in this case, everything becomes complicated. But difficulties should not be an excuse to give up.
Sometimes, when I sit at the Santander lighthouse, near Cabo Mayor – the same horizon where that tragic accident occurred – I let my gaze wander into the sea and think that its great waters hold a secret that perhaps we will never know. 1,593 days have passed since July 15, 2021. More than four years of unanswered questions and living with a silence that weighs more than the tides.
But I also know that I’m not alone. I am left with my sister, who shares this emptiness and this silent way of remembering it. And I am supported by the people who, almost five years later, accompany me in this mourning: my blood relatives, and the friends who, since then, have also become family. With those who understand the pain without naming it. In the first moments we hear too many times that “these things happen”, as if the sea had the right to take them away. But I’m not. Not for those of us left searching for answers. Therefore, this discreet support – that of those who remain here, day after day – is also a form of justice.
When something hits me, the same thought always comes back: nothing will hurt me more than my father’s death. There is no cure for such a loss; All that remains is to learn to move forward. The days pass, although since then the hands of the clock seem to move more slowly. We have to work, we have to study, we have to live as if he could see us. Because remembering is not staying anchored: it is continuing to walk with your name firmly attached to your memory, so that neither the sea – nor time – takes it away completely.
For almost five years I didn’t talk about it in any media. Time has brought some order to the chaos. Today, telling it about in EL PAÍS, the newspaper where I do my internship, is not just journalism: it is an act of memory. It’s my way of preventing this disappearance – and many others at sea – from falling into oblivion. No one dies if it remains in memory. Dad, you will always be in mine.
