Overview
- The 66-year-old retiree Juan José Mutilba fell overboard while fishing and has been missing since the incident, which family accounts place on Tuesday during a passage from Siracusa to Pilos.
- Mutilba’s wife remained alone on the catamaran and could not raise the alarm because the vessel lacked mobile coverage, leaving the boat to drift for three days before she contacted a family friend.
- Spain’s Salvamento Marítimo relayed the alert to Italian and Greek rescue services after the friend raised the alarm, and Greek units later located the unmanned vessel and towed it to Pilos while the search for Mutilba continues under Italian coordination.
- The rescued wife, Carmen Díez, is receiving medical and psychological care in Pilos and her family warns she may suffer long-term trauma from three days alone and incomunicada on the drifting boat.
- The family says it receives little information about which assets and search areas are active and has asked Spain’s Interior Ministry and the embassy to intervene, noting that overlapping Italian and Greek maritime jurisdictions complicate coordination and that survival chances fall rapidly with time.