Μake us preferred on Google The disappearance of 66-year-old Spanish businessman Juan José Mutilba Obregón has turned into a thriller after he went missing during a sailing trip from Sicily to Greece with his wife.
The journey began on Monday, August 17, from Syracuse, with Pylos in southern Greece as the final destination. On Tuesday morning, the 66-year-old caught a tuna and was photographed on deck. Shortly afterward, while trying to clean the fish, he slipped and fell into the sea. His wife, Carmen, heard him desperately shouting at her to stop the boat, but she did not know how to react and, with only limited sailing experience, was unable to do so.
The sailboat gradually drifted away from the spot where he had fallen. With no cell phone signal, the woman remained at the mercy of the waves for three full days, with only a small amount of food to survive.
Buscan a Juan José Mutilba, un empresario español de 68 años que cayó de su barco en aguas de Italia: su familia pide ayuda para encontrarlo pic.twitter.com/6wcdO1D0tz
— Informativos Telecinco (@informativost5) August 23, 2026
The unanswered questions
The central question is whether the apparent accident could have been prevented.
Things might have turned out differently if the 66-year-old’s wife had managed to turn off the sailboat’s engine or had used the radio, if the vessel was equipped with a conventional VHF radio that operates on radio frequencies, to send an SOS.
The rescue and investigation
The tragedy came to light when a family friend with extensive sailing experience suspected that something was wrong after noticing that the boat had deviated from its course.
On Friday, when Carmen finally found a cell phone signal, she called him in a panic. He alerted Spain’s Maritime Rescue service, which mobilized authorities in Italy and Greece. A Greek authorities’ vessel located the sailboat and towed it to Pylos, where it remains.
Italian authorities are in charge of the investigation, while hopes of finding the 66-year-old are fading because of the precious time that was lost. Meanwhile, the family is appealing to the Spanish Embassy in Rome and is asking authorities not to halt the search operations.
‘I don’t want to go back’
Sixty-seven-year-old Carmen Diez is in a state of shock as she tries to process what happened. According to her son, Sergio, speaking to the Spanish newspaper El Mundo, there is one phrase she has repeated since she was rescued: “If Dad is not found, I don’t want to go back to Burgos.”
Experts who evaluated her recommended that she continue receiving support and warned the family that the full impact of what happened may emerge once the intensity of these first few days subsides.
“She still tells the whole story with a strange sense of naturalness, almost as if she were describing a movie and not something that happened to her. She still hasn’t fully realized what happened,” Sergio explains. According to what the family was told, she will need medication, while there is a possibility that she could develop post-traumatic stress and require support for an extended period.
The first symptom, however, has already appeared. Carmen blames herself for being unable to react in the seconds after her husband fell overboard. She obtained a recreational boating license “many years ago,” but had never had to take sole control of the sailboat in such circumstances. “She saw him in the water and believes she could have thrown him something, that perhaps she should have reacted differently… We are trying to convince her that she cannot carry this burden, but she is devastated,” her son says.
