# Rescuers search after tour boat sinks near Padar Island with Spanish family aboard
Event date: 2025-12-27
Indonesian rescue teams searched the waters near Padar Island on December 27, 2025, after a tour boat carrying 11 people sank overnight, leaving a Spanish father and three of his children missing, according to the Associated Press. The passengers included six Spanish tourists, four crew members and a local guide. The boat went down Friday evening after suffering engine failure on a trip from Komodo Island to Padar within Komodo National Park.
Fathur Rahman, head of the Maumere Search and Rescue Office, said three people were rescued by a passing vessel and four more were later picked up by search teams. The survivors included the Spanish mother and one daughter. The missing group was the father, two sons and another daughter. AP later said Spanish football club Valencia identified the father as women's reserve team coach Fernando Martín and said local authorities had confirmed the deaths of Martín and his three children.
That detail introduced a tension in the evidence packet: while the local rescue official said the four remained missing and the search was suspended for the night because of bad weather and poor visibility, Valencia and Real Madrid issued condolences indicating the deaths had been confirmed. Because the source packet includes both elements in the same AP report, the safest interpretation is that the search-and-rescue operation was still being described operationally even as local authorities had apparently communicated a fatal outcome to the family and to the club.
The search area covered a five-nautical-mile radius around the sinking site, where debris from the boat had been found. The response involved inflatable rescue boats, a navy vessel with diving equipment, a rescue ship and help from local fishermen and residents. Strong waves up to 2.5 meters and darkness complicated the overnight response, and Rahman said teams would resume work early the following day.
Komodo National Park is one of Indonesia's best-known tourist destinations, famous for diving, trekking and the Komodo dragon. The sinking again highlighted the vulnerability of maritime transport in an archipelago of more than 17,000 islands, where boats are essential but safety standards are often criticized and serious accidents occur regularly.
The verified picture from the event date is that a family holiday turned into a maritime disaster near one of Indonesia's showcase tourist sites. Seven people were rescued, four members of one Spanish family were unaccounted for in the operational search narrative, and football clubs in Spain publicly mourned them. Whether framed as an active recovery effort or a confirmed fatal loss, the row's evidence supports the same core conclusion: the sinking near Padar Island left one family bearing nearly the full human cost of the accident.
