On February 6, it was 50 years since the shipwreck in which ten sailors from Cádiz died on the coast of Lanzarote due to the shipwreck of the fishing boat Domenech de Varo. Five of them were reported missing, no one informed their relatives that their bodies were recovered and buried in five unnamed niches in the San Román cemetery in Arrecife. Now their relatives have started a fight to bring them back to their homeland.
During this half century, José Manuel Pose, who was 18 years old when the shipwreck occurred, like the rest of the relatives of those five sailors, have lived with the sorrow of thinking that the bodies of their parents disappeared at sea.
Mourning a disappearance at sea
"It is an immense pain, I don't wish it on anyone. I remember my mother's pain, she wasn't mourning a death, she was mourning a disappearance at sea, she never recovered from that," he explains to EFE.
Half a century later, their relatives began to contact each other a few months ago, when, as the 50th anniversary of the tragedy approached, they thought of paying tribute to the victims.
"We didn't know each other, but now, with the Internet, you can go very far by pressing a key," says José Manuel Pose, who now chairs the Association of Relatives and Friends of the Victims of the Shipwreck of the Domenech de Varo Vessel. They began to gather information. Pose made an 11-day trip to Arrecife where he delved into different archives.
This is how the story of that ship that left from El Puerto de Santa María, with twelve men from this town and from Sanlúcar de Barrameda, Barbate and Cádiz, to fish off the coast of North Africa, was reconstructed.
On a night of rough seas, the ship had to go to Arrecife to fix a breakdown and collided with some rocks. "When I heard the boom of the blow, I put my legs on the ground and the water was already up to my belly," says José Mangas, the only one of the two survivors who still lives, in Sanlúcar de Barrameda.
Giant waves carried away all the crew members. Only the skipper and he managed to reach the coast. That night the first two corpses appeared and in the morning, a third. The two survivors were able to identify them before returning to their homeland.
But from that moment on, "the peninsular authorities and bodies, specifically those of the Bay of Cádiz, stop providing information to the relatives about the appearances of the rest of the bodies." The local press on the island reported that five more bodies were recovered in the following days.
Five unnamed niches
Their bodies, unidentified, were buried in unnamed niches, next to those of the three who were identified. The families were never informed. The relatives have quantified the amount they would need to complete the identification and bring their remains to their places of origin at 14,900 euros.
Among them there are very humble people who "would have to wait another five years" to be able to save the expenses. For this reason, they have started a campaign to collect help.
The provincial deputy of IU, Carmen Álvarez, has registered a motion that the plenary session of the Provincial Council of Cádiz will address.
"Their wives have died without being able to bring flowers to a grave and with the pain of thinking throughout their lives that the bodies were submerged in the sea," explains the motion, which understands that "there is a moral responsibility on the part of the administrations."
The relatives assure that they are receiving support for their efforts from town councils, parties and fishermen's associations, except from the Social Marine Institute.
"We are not claiming anything. If we did, it would be prescribed," says the president of the association, who understands that the only thing they are pursuing is to uncover "the harsh reality, that it was covered up" and that today "what was not done in its day" is done, to identify some dead sailors and that their families can know where their remains are.
María del Mar Rodríguez, a resident of Sanlúcar de Barrameda, never even met her father. He saw her born, said goodbye to her in the hospital and eleven days later he died in that shipwreck at the age of 23, a year after marrying her mother. She never thought she would have more connection with him. Now that she casually found his name on social media, she can, 50 years later, heal a part of her grief.
"Each of us has a 70% chance that our parents are in one of those five niches and a 30% chance that they are the two who actually disappeared at sea. But we want to take the risk. Until now we had a 0% chance," says the president of the association.
