The Canary Islands has become the third Autonomous Community with the highest number of unintentional drowning deaths in aquatic spaces in 2023, with a total of 52 deaths, according to the statistics carried out by the Royal Spanish Lifesaving and Rescue Federation.
Throughout the country, the year 2023 has ended with 422 unintentional drowning deaths in aquatic spaces, which is almost 8% more than in 2022 and is the worst figure since 2019.
In addition, last year's figure is the fourth worst record in the historical series, that is, in the last nine years, since this report began to be prepared in 2015.
This is despite the fact that December experienced a sharp decrease, with 17 deaths compared to 29 in the same month of the previous year.
For the second time since 2015, Andalusia is once again the autonomous community with the most drownings, with 68, the same as occurred then.
After Andalusia is Catalonia, with 66 deaths, the Canary Islands (52), the Valencian Community and Galicia, both with 46, the Balearic Islands (32), Asturias (17), Castilla y León (16), Murcia (16), the Basque Country (15), Castilla-La Mancha (10), Aragon (9), Madrid (7), Extremadura (5) and Navarra (4), in addition to Ceuta (3), while in Melilla there have been no drownings.
Last year, the beach was the setting where the highest number of drowning deaths was recorded, 231 of the total (54.7%), followed by rivers, with 63 (14.9%) and swimming pools 47 (11.1%), while 81 occurred in other aquatic spaces.
A total of 103 of the 422 deaths occurred in places with surveillance, compared to 148 that occurred in areas without surveillance and 171 in places where it was not appropriate to have a service.
The profile of the person who died by drowning during 2023 is a man (80.3%), over 45 years of age (76.5%), of Spanish nationality (72.5%), who loses his life on a beach (54.7%) or in any case in an unsupervised space (75.6%), between 10:00 a.m. and 2:00 p.m. (31%).
Thus, 57% of deaths occurred in summer.
