"I heard screams, people wailing." That's how Marcial Curbelo knew something serious was happening near the Órzola dock, where he was on Tuesday afternoon when the tragic capsizing of a boat occurred. At that moment, there were numerous police and emergency personnel in the port, because they were transferring the immigrants who had arrived in La Graciosa that morning on another boat.
"I alerted all the emergency services that were there and the Civil Guard of what I had heard, but they were doubtful," he explains. Then, he decided not to wait and ran to the area where the screams were coming from. "I went there alone, saw the situation and had to jump into the water. I didn't think about anything," he says.
"I jumped in blindly. With the darkness, I couldn't do anything more than what I did, because my life was also in danger," he recalls hours later, after spending a night in which he could hardly sleep. He knows he saved the lives of several people, although he also feels the weight of those who ended up dying.
"It's terrible to be in the water and have to see who you save and who you don't save," he recalls from his home, where he is in isolation this Wednesday and waiting to be tested for Covid according to protocol. "People ask me if I touched them. Of course I touched them! I touched them, I hugged them, I caressed them... They were children!" he exclaims. "At that moment I didn't think about Covid or anything."
Among the survivors are seven minors, and Marcial points out that the rest were also "kids, very young people." "I could be the father of all of them," he reflects with sorrow.
"I spoke to everyone. I don't understand their language but we understood each other. Just by looking into each other's eyes, we understood each other. They were having a bad time and they knew that I gave them a great help," he adds when talking about the scenes experienced on land.
Before, he explains that he had spent at least five minutes alone in the water, which "were terrible." "I would grab the one who was moving and I had to leave the one who wasn't moving. I couldn't get close to everyone together either, I went one by one, because otherwise I would go to the bottom with all of them," he says bluntly. He doesn't even know how many people he managed to save. "I remember the first three or four, but I didn't start counting. What I wanted was to get everyone out of the water."
Drowned next to the coast and with a depth of two and a half meters
The boat was next to the coast when it ran aground in a rocky area and Marcial explains that the depth was only about two and a half meters, but the problem was that the boat started to sink and almost none of them knew how to swim. In fact, he says that only one managed to reach land on his own.
The rest of the 28 survivors did so with his help and with the help of the people who joined the rescue later, including other residents of the town and the emergency personnel who were at the Órzola dock and who also arrived in the area a few minutes later. "They all did very well too," emphasizes Marcial, who was a Red Cross lifeguard in the 90s. "I have that in my blood all my life and I know more or less how to act in these cases," he adds.
In addition, he points out that the tragedy could have been even greater if the capsizing had occurred a little further from the coast or if there had not been so many emergency personnel in the area. "A little further down and we wouldn't have heard the screams. Then things would have been more complicated. It would have been fatal. But we were alerted by the screams and we were able to do what we could do," he insists. He also remembers his own screams for help. "My screams were heartbreaking. I couldn't scream anymore."
"It is a great shame that this is happening in the Canary Islands, that we are losing lives there and no one is doing anything. I don't know what these politicians are thinking, the truth is that I don't know what they are thinking. It's a sadness," he reflects with anger and frustration after what he experienced on Tuesday night.
"This government has to take urgent measures. Very urgent. They should stop throwing the ball to each other. They only like the little picture. Some people like a photo a lot and no gentlemen, it's not like that, there are human lives," he questions while looking from the window of his house at the device that is still searching for other possible victims this Wednesday.
According to the testimonies of the survivors, there were about 35 people traveling in the boat, and so far 36 have been found: 28 of them alive and eight dead. However, they also explained that there was a woman with a small child, who have not been found. Therefore, given the possibility that there were really more people on the boat, the search device remains active.
"I would like to be there," says Marcial, who explains that, like him, several other people who participated in the rescue on Tuesday night are in isolation. And while he waits and looks helplessly out the window, he leaves another reflection on the possibility that this tragedy will increase even more: "For a mother to get on a boat like that with a child, something has to be happening."
