The family of Spanish fan Santiago Sanchez, who walked from Madrid to Doha to participate in the 2022 World Cup qualifiers, said they hadn’t heard from him since the first day after entering Iran nearly three weeks ago.
Sanchez, 41, a former paratrooper and athlete, was last seen in Iraq after walking through 15 countries. His family has expressed fear for him in light of the current conditions Iran is going through, including demonstrations and arrests.
Sanchez’s family said they last contacted him on October 2, the day after he entered Iran. “We’re so worried, we can’t stop crying, my husband and I,” his mother told The Associated Press.
The last time he communicated with his family, Sanchez told his father Santiago in a voice message that he is in Iran and that a friend will soon accompany him to Bandar Abbas (southern Iran) near the island of Hormuz, explaining that he plans to go to Tehran before then, as one of the local channels had asked him for an interview. .
Sanchez was supposed to take a boat from Bandar Abbas port to go to Qatar, but his traces completely disappeared before reaching Tehran.
Sanchez had warned his family that communicating with them would not be as easy as during his trip in the previous months once he entered Iran. His family says they didn’t worry because he hadn’t posted anything on social media, especially his Instagram page, in just a few days.
But after 8 or 9 days, her daughter and close friends began to seriously consider reporting her missing, according to her mother, and this was done on October 17.
The family said Spanish diplomatic and security authorities were trying to help the family find Sanchez, while the foreign ministry said it had no information on his current location and that the Madrid ambassador to Tehran was following up on the question.
This isn’t Sanchez’s first trip to Iran, as he went through it in 2019 when he made a similar trip from Madrid to Saudi Arabia, this time on a bicycle.
Since mid-September, Iran has witnessed a strong protest movement against the backdrop of the death of the 22-year-old woman, Mahsa Amini, after being arrested by the “moral police”. The authorities responded with a wave of violent repression.
