Manuel Navarro, the biologist from Gran Canaria who was traveling aboard the shipwrecked fishing vessel 'Villa de Pitanxo'.
Time seems to have stopped at the Rodríguez bar, one of the traditional meeting places in Lomo Apolinario, a humble neighborhood in the upper part of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.
The place is owned by Carmen Rodríguez and José Navarro.
They are the parents of Manuel Navarro, the 33-year-old biologist from Gran Canaria who was traveling as an observer aboard the fishing boat
Villa de Pitanxo,
a freezer ship 50 meters long (long) that capsized on Tuesday 450 kilometers southeast of the Canadian island of Newfoundland.
Her body is one of 12 that could not be rescued.
They will hardly appear, since the authorities of the North American country definitively suspended the search and rescue tasks last Wednesday.
Three crew members managed to save their lives and the bodies of another nine were located in the first hours.
"In the neighborhood we are all sunk,
low
," says Antonio García, leaning on the door of the establishment.
García is a neighbor, door to door, of the family, and he has known Manuel since he was a child.
Navarro's description of him coincides with that of everyone who is asked in the area: worker, great person, lover of basketball and the Las Palmas Sports Union and, above all, passionate about the sea.
Manolín
, "Pepe's son, the one from the bar".
More information
Javier Rodríguez, the crew member who was saved from the shipwreck due to an injury: "I only think about the lives of my colleagues who were left behind"
Navarro studied at the neighborhood public school, the CEIP Pintor Néstor (after the Gran Canarian painter Néstor Martín-Fernández de la Torre).
The basketball court was a witness, his neighbors say, of many of the games in which he participated in his youth.
He did not move from the neighborhood to attend high school.
His institute, IES Ana Benítez, is just 700 meters away on foot.
Navarro's great passion, his acquaintances continue, was always the sea.
So much so, that he owned a pleasure boat in the capital's marina and that, once he finished his Biology studies at the University of La Laguna, in Tenerife, he did not hesitate to find a way to get on board to practice his profession.
At the bar, most customers refuse to speak.
"It seems to me a very painful situation for the family," says a neighbor who does not reveal his name.
“The poor parents must be devastated.
The boy is the youngest of three brothers, and he helped at the bar whenever he was not on board.
Something that has not been frequent lately.
Navarro was employed by the owner of the
Pitanxo
, Pesquería Nores Marín SL, as a guardian of fishing sustainability.
His job was to control the catch that was taken (how much is caught, what size they are and what is discarded) and to ensure that the nets did not capture species that could be protected in each fishing ground.
“It is a job as hard and dangerous as that of the fishermen themselves”, explain sources from the marine investigation in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, “but, in general, with worse working conditions”.
The biologist from Gran Canaria Manuel Navarro, 33, among the missing from the shipwreck of the Galician fishing vessel 'Villa de Pitanxo'.
He is originally from the Lomo Apolinario neighborhood in the city of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, where his parents run the Rodríguez bar.
/ QUIQUE CURBELO
His friends told the local newspaper
La Provincia
that this was the fourth time that Navarro had enlisted.
On previous occasions, his destinations had been the Canadian coast itself, Brazil and Cape Verde.
The television resounds in the bar, with the regional channel tuned.
The parishioners look at the screen with moist eyes, pending the latest news.
"I just want it to appear," pointed out her mother, Carmen Rodríguez, last Wednesday.
They received the first call on the same Tuesday.
The ship's master telephoned them to inform them that the fishing boat had sunk.
“If it shows up, it will be a miracle,” laments a middle-aged lady who is rushing a coffee with milk.
“But they have suspended everything… All that remains is to wait for the worst.”
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