Spanish fan walking to World Cup goes missing in Iran

Santiago Sanchez has not been heard from since beginning of month

Spanish fan, Santiago Sanchez (Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved)

A Spanish football fan travelling by foot from Madrid to Doha for next month’s World Cup has gone missing in Iran.

The family of Santiago Sanchez, an experienced trekker, former paratrooper and die-hard football fan has not been heard from since crossing into Iran three weeks ago, his family said Monday, stirring fears about his fate in a country currently convulsed by mass unrest.

Mr Sanchez, 41, was last seen in Iraq after hiking through 15 countries and extensively sharing his journey on a popular Instagram account over the last nine months. But his exuberant posts stopped suddenly on 1 October, the day he entered Iran from the country’s volatile northwestern border.

Sanchez’s family says his daily WhatsApp updates stopped that day as well. Weeks later, they fear the worst.

“We are deeply worried, we can’t stop crying, my husband and I,” his mother, Celia Cogedor, told The Associated Press.

Sanchez’s parents have reported him as missing to Spain’s national police and the foreign ministry. But Spanish authorities say they have no information about his whereabouts, adding that the Spanish ambassador to Tehran was handling the matter.

Iran was his last stop before reaching Qatar.

The largest anti-government protests in over a decade are currently taking place in Iran. Demonstrations erupted in September over the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman taken into custody by Iran’s morality police for allegedly not adhering to the country’s strict Islamic dress code.

Mr Sanchez had been trekking while carrying a small suitcase in a wheeled cart, packed with little more than a tent, water purification tablets and a gas stove for his 11 months on the road.

He said he wanted to learn how others lived by living among them before reaching Qatar in time for Spain’s first match on 23 November, against Costa Rica.

The day before he disappeared, Sanchez had breakfast with a guide in Sulaymaniyah, a Kurdish city in northeastern Iraq. Sanchez’s parents said he had warned them he’d temporarily lose internet access after reaching Iran.