A sad figure was reached last June: a total of 57 unintentional fatal drownings were registered in Spain, which is the second month with the most deaths from this cause in the last nine years. According to the National Drowning Report (INA), which has been prepared by the Royal Spanish Rescue and Lifeguard Federation since 2015, more drownings were recorded in Spain only in 2017, with a total of 70 victims.
In this way, the upward trend in deaths in Spanish aquatic spaces during 2023 is confirmed. And it happened in May, the month in which 33 deaths were registered, only surpassed by May 2016, with 54 fatal drownings. In total figures, in the first six months of 2023, 169 people lost their lives by drowning, which means 29 more than in the same period of 2022. Only 2016, with 211 deaths, and 2017, with 209, exceed the figures for this year. .
And the trend seems to continue to be the same this July, although there is still no data that can corroborate it. Without going any further, only in Catalonia last weekend four deaths were recorded on Catalan beaches.
Three of them happened on Saturday. The first case was recorded on the beach of l’Estartit, in which the victim was a 55-year-old man, while the second was a 60-year-old man who drowned on a beach in Castelló d’Empúries. But the most shocking case happened on the Miracle beach (Tarragona): a 32-year-old man with Indian nationality lost his life in the water. He was surprised because in general the ages of bathers who drown usually range between 55 and 75 years.
The fourth death also happened on Sunday in Estartit, where the lifeguard services pulled a 65-year-old man out of the water, to whom they applied resuscitation maneuvers that were of no use.
In view of these increases in cases, the director of Prevention and Safety of the Royal Spanish Federation of Rescue and First Aid, Francisco Cano Noguera, has transmitted to citizens “the need to apply the safety advice that the federation disseminates.” Noguera continues “reclaiming previous dissemination campaigns in educational and social centers.”
