“It’s been a year since I heard his voice for the last time,” Noemí Rivas whispers softly. 32 years old, 13 as a couple with Pedro Herrera, eight married, and their vital project was swallowed up by the Newfoundland Sea a year ago today, on February 15, 2022. Their son Martín was eight months old at the time and has learned to walk, to talk and love her cat without her father by her side. She knows who she is and points to the photos of him that cover all the walls of her house saying “dad.” “You ask him where her father is and he says: dad is in heaven,” explains her mother, completely devastated. She has psychological help, sleeping pills and a little boy who “pushes me forward every day”, but there is no possible consolation.
Neither for Francisca Okutu. Her husband, Edemon Okutu, was traveling a year ago on the same ship, the Villa de Pitanxo. She was at home with her three children, the youngest, still a baby, seven months old. This woman from Ghana hardly speaks Spanish, but her eldest daughter, Jeanette, with 14 years who seems 20 and the pain trapped in her eyes, does. “My sister sometimes walks around the house saying ‘dad, dad’ and that hurts me a lot.”
The boy says that his father is in heaven… and that hurts a lot
The three sit on a bench in Marín, the municipality of Pontevedra that was the base port of the sunken ship, and share their experiences in conversation with EL MUNDO. They do not let go of their hands, the three united by tragedy and shared pain. As soon as they meet, they give each other a big hug and they don’t need to speak to understand each other, because they have been living the same life in reverse for twelve months, widows and in charge of orphaned children to whom they do not know how to explain that their father will not return.
Their husbands are two of the 21 who died in the Villa de Pitanxo shipwreck. They both find it consoling that her last conversation spoke of love, congratulating each other on a Valentine’s Day that they will never repeat, but little more because they don’t even have anywhere to go to cry. Only 9 of the shipwrecked sailors appeared, the other 12 are still in the Canadian Sea.
The Government has just tendered a contract to go down to the wreck of the ship and help investigate an accident investigated in the National Court: the shipowner, Pesquerías Nores, and the ship’s skipper, Juan Padín, are under investigation. The families demanded the process months ago and trust that it will allow the truth to be known.
Francisca and Jeanette hope that Edemon’s body will turn up, but Noemí no longer. Pedro was the first engineer officer and knows that he was trapped on the ship. «The body is impossible to recover. I have assumed it, but that there is evidence below, yes ». The worst thing this year has been, for Noemí, “that you don’t have a duel yet” and he knows that he won’t until the investigation is complete. That is why he fights, along with the rest of the families, “for Justice to be done.” He has the support of the rest of the families, his sister, his brother-in-law and his nieces, who “don’t let go of my hand at all”, but the road is uphill. The first three days she couldn’t even see her son’s face because “he’s just like Pedro”, he spent six months sleeping on the sofa, with his comadre by his side, so as not to go to a bed that was suddenly empty.
Having someone to share what is happening to them helps them cope and one of their supporters is Samuel Kwesi, a Ghanaian sailor who survived the shipwreck along with his skipper and his nephew, Eduardo Rial. His testimony, which contradicts the official version, has been key to the investigation and they “100%” believe a story that speaks of the captain’s negligence. He is a “deep” man and “you know he doesn’t lie.” No, they say, like the captain and the shipowner; they feel abandoned by them.
Jeanette says of Samuel, on behalf of her mother, that she is “very grateful” that “he is telling the truth and is supporting all of our families.” However, a year ago the owner called her mother to tell her that there was “a small problem” at Villa de Pitanxo and she has not contacted her again, not even to inform her of her death.
Of those days, Jeanette remembers that “it was like a movie, I didn’t believe it” and to this day she continues to see how her sisters do not sleep or her mother suffers. “There are nights that I see her cry and I ask her if she is okay and she tells me yes but I know she is not,” she explains as she remembers her father, an experienced sailor with more than 20 years in Galician ships.
Being a sailor’s wife or daughter is assuming that the worst can happen, but nothing really prepares them. “You never think that it will happen to you,” Noemí insists, “an accident can happen, but not this.” An accident happened to her husband as soon as he left the port: an iron plate fell on her hand, she thought they would send him home, and yet, “the captain bandaged his fingers and continued.” .
A good part of the Villa de Pitanxo crew had covid-19 just before the shipwreck. Pedro was one of them, as Noemí has ??learned, who only has complaints about the treatment received by the boss. “He treated them like dogs.” Her husband continued to join his boat because it meant 45 days away and 15 at home, and that way he could see his son grow up, facing the much longer tides of fishing grounds like the Great Sun. They had been together for 13 years and “you were used to 45 days and that your husband returns” and today she finds herself alone, raising a child that “was Pedro’s wish”. In her last conversation, she told him that in a matter of days she would be home, they would celebrate Carnival. “And it didn’t come.”
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