“Adri, I want to take a walk.” Martin, sitting on the sofa, interrupted the conversation with his brother: “I want to clear my head, I need to get out”, insisted. “But… you’re here to eat, right?” Adrian answered. The clock marked almost 1:00 p.m. on November 12. “Yes, yes. Don’t worry, it’s for a walk, promised, I’ll be back before lunch.” Martin did not return.
Alerts have been activated; They followed him with shakes, posters with his photo and appeals on social networks: ‘Wanted for Martin Fyrla, a 23-year-old missing in Santander”. Nobody knows where it is.
He had been out for a while. At home they set the table. Martin did not arrive. He’ll need more time alone, Adrian thought. Oblivious to everything, in parallel, a man who was making a route with his daughters through the coastal area of Cueto (Santander) alerted the 112: There was someone swimming in a dangerous area. Suddenly, the hiker stopped seeing him. An emergency helicopter flew over the place.
“I’m a little overwhelmed, I need to walk“, the phrase resonates with Adrian Fyrla, Martin’s brother (and famed DJ and music producer). “The days before I was a bit off, confused…“, tells CASO ABIERTO, the event and investigation portal of Prensa Ibérica, “but it was on its feet. He was walking, doing yoga… now he’s gone.”
“I’ve stopped seeing it”
The hiker hung up the phone and waited on the spot. The emergency services arrived at the indicated area, Cueto (Santander), some cliffs near the place where the ‘Giant Cow’ surf championship is held. “He was swimming calmly,” the man would describe, who claims he tried to get him out of the water. Sea conditions were not good. There was a strong swell. “I don’t know if he didn’t listen to me or didn’t hear me,” the witness explained. There was no trace of the bather, no alert or complaint. The helicopter left.
The phone in ‘airplane mode’
The afternoon wore on, meanwhile, at Martin’s house. “He’ll be with a friend or for a walk,” Adrian recalls that they thought at home, “he hasn’t been well lately.”
His mother passed away about a month and a half ago.. “Martin was very helpful to her and he was very attached to her.” His departure destabilized him a bit, “he had thought of going to India, but he did not take the step. He is very connected to nature. He doesn’t like capitalism, he doesn’t like everything that is not human… ‘Today everything is very robotic,'” his brother remembers him saying.
They tried to call him on the phone, they were unable to contact him. As soon as he crossed the door, Martin had put the mobile in ‘airplane mode’. Many times he did it “to be able to be with him, so they don’t bother him.” not surprised.
Night came, and the young man did not come home; “We went looking for him,” recalls Adrian, “but we kept calm. I’m sure he’d come back like he used to do.” At home they agreed on a margin time, one day: “seeing that the weather was very bad and that nothing had been taken, on sunday we went to denounce“.
“Right now the police are looking for a bather and Martin, two missing people, until it is proven that that bather was him”
At the police station, the police officer collected all the information: “My brother left home yesterday, before lunch. He has not returned and we do not know where he may be. He is 23 years old, 1’80 cm tall, has a thin complexion and has long hair and goatee. at the time of the disappearance he was wearing red pants, a dark gray sweatshirt and some blue and yellow shoes.” They returned home, uneasy. That same afternoon, a National Police patrol rang the doorbell of their house: Martin could have been at sea.
“There is a bather missing, they told us. Right now the police are looking for a bather and his brother. They are two people until proven otherwise”, revives Adrian, “but… they also said that, probably, the bather was my brother because there were no more complaints“. They started the raids, intermittent, because they were marked by a strong storm.
His sweatshirt and his sneakers
One of the points to beat was centered in the Cueto area, half an hour from home, where the witness claimed to see a young man swimming. A couple of days later, volunteers -arriving from different parts of the map, friends and followers of Adrian- They found a sweatshirt and sneakers. “They were his”confirms his brother. They were in a rocky area, difficult to access. “We confirm with this that my brother was there taking a bath,” laments Adrian. “The shoes were untied, so he took off his clothes, left them on some rock and went to bathe“. The mobile phone did not appear.
The police, before the finding, unified the two disappearances: “what they are considering, 99%, is that Martin was swimming, He didn’t see the danger and it was already late for him to go out…”, his brother reconstructs, “but they also affirm that they have seen rarer cases, people who have appeared after 8 or 9 yearsthe last case in the Canary Islands, recently, one of the policemen who are handling the case told me”.
The ground raids ended. “What was planned, but has not yet been resumed, is the search by sea“, laments Adrian, who together with his family -his father, his sister- awaits the arrival of the boat, drones and divers -promised- who can find Martin, if he is in the water.
“I also think that my brother could have swallowed the sea at 99% of possibilities, but I contemplate that other 1%…in the option that that bather was not him”, he says. “In any case, until we see what there is to see, either inside or outside the sea, what happened only my brother Martin knows.”
Although it was one of the central hypotheses, the young man’s family does not consider suicide as an option. “It would be strange. If it’s my brother, the witness sees him for about twenty minutes. If we know anything, it’s that he was swimming quietly. He didn’t jump off a cliff or anything. They tried to tell him, but my brother, if it was him, didn’t hear or didn’t listen. He was swimming calmly, he was fine.”
reasons to believe
1% is not a high number, it is only one possibility in a hundred. But in the case of Martin Fyrla it is feasible, viable. “Although all the cards point to the sea, because they point, maybe there is only one, but it is a real chance that my brother is not in the water“draws Adrian.
Extremely intelligent, “different, unique and special”, there are many times that he has been absent before. “Leaving, getting lost, and coming back as if nothing had happened: ‘Hello, how are you family?‘”, revives, almost smiling today, Adrian. “And we receive him with a: ‘but where were you?, but with what money?’
The last time it happened in Asturias, a few weeks before he disappeared. “She left for five days without saying anything, without clothes, without food, and then she came back. Martin is capable of everything. He may even have made it to India. In fact, before finding the sweatshirt, his sneakers… his friends really thought he had been able“, says Adrian.
“Once he went from Santander to Malaga, with what he was wearing and without money. He arrived hitchhiking and asking for food in restaurants, but he arrived”
Adventurous and self-sufficient, “once again he went from Santander to Malaga with what he was wearing and without money. He hitchhiked. He went to restaurants saying that if they could give him something to eat… and arrived in Malaga”.
Lover of music, of the guitar, “it is very artistic, plays and sings very well“. Passionate about flamenco and old music, pure, from before: The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, he did yoga twice a week, he had an orchard in his garden, and he was passionate about reading. “I didn’t know it, but it was key in everyone’s life, without realizing it, he was helping everyone.” They search endlessly and wait for him, “alive or not; at sea or out…”, they need to know what happened that fateful morning when he left, never to return.
