A routine fishing trip ended in tragedy off the coast of La Palma in the Canary Islands on Sunday, July 20, 2026, when a man in his 60s was struck and killed by the propeller of a pleasure boat near Puntagorda on the island’s west coast.
According to the Civil Guard, the man had gone out with his friend, who was also the boat’s skipper. The two had been fishing together for decades in the same stretch of water between Porís de Tijarafe and El Puerto de Puntagorda, an area popular with local fishing boats but accessible by sea due to the cliffs lining that part of the La Palma coastline.
Televisión Canaria reported the man was a fishing enthusiast who frequently headed out on recreational trips in these waters. For him, this was a typical outing, a Sunday morning he had experienced many times before, in familiar waters with a lifelong friend. 
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What Happened
The man fell into the water and was struck by the boat’s propeller before becoming trapped and entangled in the blades. His body became lodged beneath the vessel. His friend, the skipper, watched helplessly from the boat as it happened.
Emergency services were alerted and responded promptly. A rescue helicopter from the Emergency and Security Group was dispatched to the scene alongside a rescue boat carrying police and paramedics. The response was swift given the remote coast, which cannot be reached by road. Despite the quick deployment, paramedics were unable to save the man.
Because the body was trapped beneath the vessel, specialist divers from the Civil Guard’s Special Underwater Activities Group, known by its Spanish acronym GEAS, were deployed to conduct underwater operations to free and recover the body. The full recovery took several hours. Firefighters from La Laguna park also participated in the effort.
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An Absolute Tragedy
In the immediate aftermath, paramedics treated the skipper for an acute anxiety attack at the scene. The mayor of Puntagorda, Vicente Rodríguez Lorenzo, confirmed that the two men had been lifelong friends and described the accident as “an absolute tragedy.”
The recreational boat was subsequently towed to the Port of Tazacorte. The Civil Guard’s Territorial Judicial Police Team has opened a formal investigation into the circumstances of the accident. At this stage, authorities are treating the incident as an accident while they work to establish the exact sequence of events that led to the man entering the water.
The accident has deeply shaken the small fishing community along La Palma’s west coast, where both men were well-known figures.
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