Sergio Mutilba has been going through agonizing moments for the past week, trying to come to terms with the fact that his father has disappeared somewhere in the Mediterranean. Juan José Mutila, 66, fell overboard from his boat, “Theorema.” Sergio’s mother and the partner of the retired businessman from Burgos managed to alert the authorities just three days later, as the boat was adrift and communication was impossible, while her efforts to locate her husband in the waters between Italy and Greece were unsuccessful.
The 66-year-old’s family is asking that more resources be mobilized to locate him, knowing how difficult the operation is, yet they insist that the necessary resources must be allocated to continue the search.
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His son believes that the fact that the boat was new and his mother did not know how to operate it may have played a role, so she could stop it and save Juan José. “We want them to keep looking for him. It’s very difficult, but we have hope,” he said in an interview with El País.
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Three days alone and without communication
The 66-year-old’s son is now in Spain, after spending several days in Pylos, where his parents were supposed to arrive following their trip that had begun in Sicily. One of his brothers has remained in the Messinian town.
He himself was by his mother’s side, who is in a state of shock and under enormous psychological strain. As he says, it took a great deal of effort to convince her to return to Madrid.
In the Spanish capital, she is now staying with her sister, with whom she has a very close relationship, and she also visited the hospital’s emergency room to receive treatment, following the recommendation of a psychologist who had been treating her in Greece. The family prefers that she not return to her home in Burgos for the time being, which is also what she herself wants.
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“She wanted to stay there until Dad was found… She can’t come to terms with it,” Sergio says. He admits that he is particularly “concerned” about the days his mother spent all alone at sea. “The disappearance of her husband, our father, and the fact that she was left alone for three days: what must she have done, what must she have been thinking…,” he says.
Italy and Greece are coordinating the search efforts
The little information the family has comes to them through the Spanish maritime rescue service, Salvamento Marítimo, which was contacted by one of Sergio’s aunts.
The Spanish agency acts as a liaison and keeps the family informed about Italy’s efforts, as Italy and Greece are coordinating the search operations. “They told us that they conducted searches four times yesterday and that they will update us every 12 hours. My aunt went to the Spanish consulate in Rome to find out which protocols have been activated,” he says.
The son of the missing man insists on the need to allocate more resources to locate Juan José or, at the very least, to exhaust all possibilities. As he explains, he called the Spanish Ministry of the Interior, where “an employee was shocked when he told her what had happened.”
“She told us she would look into it, but we haven’t heard anything. No one from the Spanish government has contacted us to explain what we should do. We’re not getting the help I think we should be getting,” he says.
He slipped on a ton of blood and fell into the sea
The incident occurred on August 18, but authorities were notified on Friday, August 21. The family has now pieced together a picture of how the accident happened.
They know that the retired businessman had caught a tuna and that he slipped on the fish’s blood, causing him to fall into the sea. His partner, in a panic, was unable to stop the sailboat and continued drifting, even as the man shouted at her to bring the boat to a halt.
Sergio explains that ever since his father retired in 2021—after first founding an IT company and then a company that distributes water dispensers for offices— his parents “traveled all over the world, mainly in the Mediterranean.”
This year they had switched boats, buying “a much larger one that was harder to handle.” “Maybe that wasn’t such a good idea after all, because they didn’t have it for very long. My father knew how to handle it perfectly, because he’s an experienced sailor, but perhaps my mother didn’t,” their son surmises.
“I saw the boat and the sea… It was very difficult.”
Sergio spent a few days with his mother in Madrid, but on Tuesday he’s returning to Burgos, trying to get back to his daily routine, work, and responsibilities, while waiting for news about his father.
He admits that he is still trying to process everything that has happened. His voice “breaks” when he recalls the moment he saw the boat in Pylos. “When I got to the boat in Pylos… I understood the situation, I looked out at the sea and… it was very hard for me. Seeing the boat and his belongings, so many thoughts were racing through my mind… I’m still trying to come to terms with everything. When all this is over… It’s very difficult to find him, but we remain hopeful,” he concludes.
Source: Protothema.gr
