Juan José Mutilba Obregón, a 66-year-old businessman from Burgos, has been missing since Tuesday, August 18, after falling overboard from the catamaran sailboat *Theorema*, on which he was sailing with his wife, Carmen Díez, from Syracuse (Sicily) to Pylos, in the Greek Peloponnese. A week later, the search by Italian and Greek authorities continues without results.
According to the family’s account, the couple had set sail from Syracuse on Monday, August 17. The next day, between 9:00 and 10:00 a.m., Mutilba, a yacht captain and avid sailor since his early retirement in 2021, had just caught a tuna when he slipped—possibly on the fish’s blood on the deck—and fell overboard. The businessman managed to ask his wife to turn off the engine, but she, in a state of shock, “did not know how or was unable to react” in time, according to their son Sergio.
Carmen held a Recreational Boat Captain’s License, which she had obtained years earlier, but she had little experience operating the catamaran, which she had purchased in February of this year. She was unable to lower one of the sails or put the boat at anchor, so the sailboat drifted away from the point where it had capsized, estimated to be about 140–150 miles off the coast of Sicily.
Three days without service
Carmen tried to call for help by radio from the very beginning, but to no avail. For three days, she remained alone on board, unable to communicate due to a lack of signal, while the boat continued to drift. It wasn’t until the early morning of Friday, August 21, that she managed to contact a family friend, an expert in navigation, who already suspected that something had happened since he hadn’t heard from the couple. It was he who alerted Spain’s Maritime Rescue Service, which relayed the alert to the Greek and Italian authorities.
According to the Hellenic Coast Guard, a report was received that a French-flagged sailboat in need of assistance was located about 18 nautical miles from Pylos. Greek patrol boats and a local fishing vessel located the boat adrift with Carmen as its sole occupant, who was in good physical condition. According to the Greek Coast Guard’s statement, the sailboat was located 18 nautical miles from Pylos. A land patrol, two LS-ELAKT (PLS) vessels, and the fishing boat ‘Ioanna-Marina’ SP 314 were dispatched to the area to provide assistance and tow the vessel to a Greek port. The official search for Mutilba began that same morning, around 6:30 a.m.
Since then, Italy has continued the search using helicopters, Coast Guard aircraft, and with the assistance of merchant ships sailing in the area. The Italian Navy confirmed that the search began on Friday, August 21, and that new operations have continued in the days since.
The last AIS (Automatic Identification System) signal transmitted by the businessman—which records a vessel’s position, speed, and identification data to prevent collisions at sea—placed his sailboat in the Ionian Sea, approximately 120 miles southeast of Capo Spartivento, in an area within Italy’s search and rescue (SAR) zone.
However, the family has complained of a significant lack of information from the Italian authorities. “We have no idea what’s being done,” said Sergio Mutilba, the missing man’s son, who lamented that much of the information about the operation was coming to them through boat captains known to his father or through vessel-tracking apps, rather than through official channels.
Faced with this situation, the family requested the intervention of the Spanish Ministry of the Interior to act as an intermediary with the Italian authorities and to press for the search to continue. According to their account, the initial contact was not very productive: they were only able to speak with an official who provided them with the phone number for Salvamento Marítimo, a service they had already contacted. The Ministry agreed to determine whether the case fell within its jurisdiction.
“Don’t stop looking”
The family’s main concern is that the search will be called off before Mutilba is found. “It’s almost impossible to find him, because the sea is so vast… But please don’t stop looking,” Sergio Mutilba pleaded. Greek port authorities, for their part, have launched an investigation into what happened.
Carmen is currently in Greece, specifically in Pylos. “I don’t want to go back to Spain until Daddy is here,” she has told those close to her. Juan José Mutilba ran the company D’ors Informática for years and later founded Mutobre, which distributes water to businesses; he handed over management of the company to his son Sergio and a business partner in 2025.
