Let’s talk facts. Of events that occur simultaneously.
It is four in the morning on Sunday, June 18, when the submersible Titan begins its dive towards the wreck of the Titanic, at a depth of 3,960 meters, where it sank in 1912. On board, five people. Four have paid $250,000 each (about 229,000 euros) to participate in the expedition: Hamish Harding, a 58-year-old British explorer; Pakistani businessman Shazada Dawood, 48, and his son Suleman, 19, and Paul Henri Nargolet, 76, who has led half a dozen expeditions to the wreck. In command, Stockton Rush, 61, an engineer and executive of OceanGate, a company that manages trips. An hour and 45 minutes later contact with the submersible is lost. The five die when the implosion of the ship occurs moments later. Remains of the Titan were discovered last Thursday, on the seabed, 500 meters from the Titanic. Ships and planes from the United States, Canada, Norway and France search the area in hopes of finding the bodies.
On Tuesday, June 20 at 7:53 p.m., the Sasemar 101 plane of the Spanish Maritime Rescue located an inflatable boat with 61 immigrants on board that had set sail from Cape Bojador (Western Sahara), under Moroccan control. Warned the freighter Navios Azure, with the flag of the Marshall Islands, deviates from its route to guard the zodiac, which is in shared waters between Spain and Morocco. That country also receives the information. Twenty-four immigrants are saved and returned to the port of origin, but the other 37 –among them a boy and a girl– die 80 miles from the coast of Gran Canaria and 40 from that of Western Sahara. They had been waiting for more than 12 hours to be rescued; neither Spain nor Morocco came to their aid. Their names are unknown, nor how much they paid to the boat mafias – 1,500, 2,000, 3,000 euros? – to try to achieve a better life.
Two events, two tragedies that occur at sea. Two worlds in the same world. And a lot to think about.
