On August 27, 1998, Lanzarote continued with its usual late summer rhythm. No one could imagine that, a few miles off the coast, the sea was about to become the scene of a tragedy that is still part of the island's recent history today.
There are afternoons that seem destined to leave no trace. Summer advances, the streets maintain their activity, tourists enjoy the island, and the airport continues with its usual movement of arrivals and departures.
But on that afternoon of August 27, 1998, something changed.
A small plane that had departed from Lanzarote airport for a tourist flight over the island would not return to land.
Four people were on board.
All four died.
28 years have passed, but that accident continues to be one of the most painful pages in Lanzarote's recent history. The Island Emergency Plan itself identifies it as the most serious air accident to have occurred on the island.
A flight over Lanzarote
The aircraft was a Cessna FR 172 J, registration EC-CYG. The official investigation identified it with file A-42/98.
It had departed to carry out a tourist flight around Lanzarote.
On board were the pilot, José Antonio Roca-Rey Ruiz Tapiador, 40 years old, and three passengers: Azucena Ruiz Mancebo, María Ángeles López García, and José Javier Viana López.
They had flown over the island and, after contemplating some of its volcanic landscapes from the air, they began their return to the airport.
It was the end of a tourist flight.
But it would not be the end that anyone expected.
The last communications
Judicial documentation allows for the reconstruction of the final moments.
At 7:11 PM, the pilot contacted the Lanzarote control tower to request instructions to join the traffic circuit and land.
The aircraft received instructions to join the corresponding leg of the runway. At that time, there was air traffic in the vicinity of the airport.
The plane was to maintain the corresponding separation and adjust its approach.
Then came the silence.
Communication with the Cessna was lost, and the aircraft ended up crashing into the sea during its approach to Guacimeta airport.
The accident was officially registered as an incident with four fatalities.
The sea as the scene of the tragedy
For those who were on land, a race against time then began. Emergency and rescue teams mobilized to locate the occupants.
The surroundings of El Varadero, in Puerto del Carmen, became one of the points from which operations were carried out.
A photograph currently preserved by Memoria de Lanzarote allows us to visually return to that moment. The image shows the Guardia Civil cordoning off the El Varadero area while rescue teams transferred the body of one of the deceased to land. The photograph was taken by Jesús Porteros and belongs to the archive of La Voz de Lanzarote.
It is difficult to contemplate it almost three decades later without imagining the bewilderment of those who approached the place that afternoon trying to understand what had happened.
The sea, which so often represents a source of life, work, and identity for Lanzarote, had become the scene of a tragedy that afternoon.
Four names
As time passes, news tends to reduce accidents to numbers.
Four deceased.
A destroyed small plane.
An investigation.
A file.
But behind that number were four people.
José Antonio Roca-Rey Ruiz Tapiador.
Azucena Ruiz Mancebo.
María Ángeles López García.
José Javier Viana López.
Four names that were forever linked to Lanzarote on August 27th.
And behind them were also families who had to face an unexpected loss and questions that would take years to find—or not find—an answer.
An investigation full of questions
From the first moments, a fundamental question arose:
What had caused the accident?
The technical investigation and later the judicial process analyzed different possibilities.
Among them was the influence that the turbulent wake of a Boeing 757, which was in the vicinity during the approach operations, might have had.
The performance of the air traffic controller and the separation between the aircraft were also examined.
The judicial investigation initially attributed possible air traffic negligence to the controller. The Public Prosecutor's Office requested the opening of oral proceedings, and the case generated significant controversy.
But the story did not end there.
The controller was finally acquitted, and that acquittal was later confirmed by the Supreme Court.
Therefore, when that accident is remembered today, it is important to distinguish between the investigated hypotheses and the causes that could be judicially proven.
The tragedy occurred.
The four people died.
The small plane fell into the sea.
But the exact cause of the accident was not established with the necessary certainty to attribute criminal responsibility to the controller.
A story that took years to close
The accident did not end on August 27.
The investigation continued.
The families continued searching for answers.
The documentation of the case took time to complete. In 1999, a court even requested the report from the investigative commission from the Ministry of Public Works, while the proceedings to clarify what happened continued.
In 2001, three years after the tragedy, the case was still alive in the courts.
The insistence of the pilot's family kept the search for responsibilities open and the judicial process continued to advance.
And still years later there were new judicial decisions related to the family's claims.
In 2010, the Supreme Court rejected the claim for compensation filed against the Administration by the pilot's family, considering that its patrimonial responsibility in the accident had not been proven.
Twelve years had passed since that afternoon.
The value of preserving memory
Perhaps today, for many Lanzaroteans, that accident is just a lost reference in some newspaper archive.
Years have passed.
The airport has changed.
The island has changed.
The volume of passengers and air operations is very different from that of 1998. The people have also changed.
Those who were children then are adults today. Those who were twenty or thirty years old today view that era from the distance imposed by almost three decades.
And precisely because of that, it is important to preserve memory.
Because a society does not only remember its great celebrations.
It also remembers its tragedies.
The photographs from La Voz de Lanzarote preserved in Memoria de Lanzarote, official documents, journalistic chronicles, and judicial files allow us to reconstruct that afternoon today from different perspectives.
They are pieces of a collective memory that would otherwise end up disappearing.
August 27
Perhaps the most moving thing about remembering this anniversary is not talking about airplanes, air traffic control, investigations, or courts.
Perhaps it is stopping for a moment on the four names.
Because statistics say there were four victims.
History says there were four people.
They had projects, families, memories, unfinished conversations, and a future that was interrupted that afternoon over the ocean.
The flight had begun like many other tourist flights.
A way to contemplate Lanzarote from above.
To see its volcanoes, its black lands, its coasts, and that landscape that takes on another dimension from the air.
And it ended in the most unexpected way.
Twenty-eight years later
On August 27, 2026, it will be 28 years since that tragedy.
Perhaps there is no visible plaque for those who stroll through Puerto del Carmen today.
Perhaps many of those who contemplate the sea from El Varadero are unaware that some of the most painful memories of that afternoon are linked to that place.
But memory does not always need monuments.
Sometimes it just needs someone to tell a story again.
To pronounce some names again.
To remember that behind an accident there were people.
That is why it is worth pausing on that date today.
Not to reopen a wound.
Not to point fingers at culprits whom the courts did not hold responsible. Not to turn the tragedy into a spectacle.
But to remember.
To say that on August 27, 1998, four people went out to contemplate Lanzarote from the sky and never returned.
And that, 28 years later, their names can still be part of this island's memory. José Antonio Roca-Rey Ruiz Tapiador.
Azucena Ruiz Mancebo.
María Ángeles López García.
José Javier Viana López.
Four names.
An August afternoon.
A small plane.
The sea.
And a story that Lanzarote should not forget.
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