The captain and two managers of the shipowner of the “Villa de Pitanxo”, a Spanish fishing boat which sank off the coast of Canada in 2022, will be tried for the death of 21 members of the crew, Spanish justice announced on Thursday.
A judge of the National Court, a court specializing in the most sensitive cases, sent to trial for involuntary manslaughter the administrator of the fishing company Nores Marín, José Antonio Nores Rodríguez, the director of the fleet, José Antonio Nores Ortega, and the captain of the ship, Juan Enrique Padín, the court said in a press release.
They will be tried, on a date which has not yet been determined, for “21 homicides by serious recklessness”, “unintentional injuries” and “crimes against workers’ rights”, continues the press release.
The magistrate imposed on the three accused the payment of a bond of 44 million euros in order to guarantee the payment of possible compensation “in view of the number of lives lost, the after-effects and the damage caused”, according to the text.
The trawler “Villa de Pitanxo” which left the Galician port of Marín (northwest of Spain), with 24 crew members, sank on February 15, 2022, 450 kilometers from the coast of Newfoundland, east of Canada.
Only three sailors could be saved: the captain, his nephew and another sailor.
The first two had claimed that the boat had sunk after drifting in very rough seas following a breakdown.
But the surviving sailor, of Ghanaian nationality, assured that the net had stuck to the bottom of the sea and that the captain had refused to cut it so as not to lose the catch.
The overloading of the boat, the lack of maintenance of the survival equipment and poor decisions by the captain led to this sinking, the worst tragedy in 40 years for the fishing sector in Spain, according to the official report published by a commission of inquiry in October 2025.
Only nine bodies were recovered and the twelve other people were never found in these 2°C waters.
The wreck of the trawler was located at the bottom of the sea in 2023, but the robot that descended on the scene was unable to find traces of the missing, to the great dismay of their families.
