Ukrainians call him Mario because Mariano is a strange name for them, difficult to remember in a Slavic country. But in Ukraine, they still remember him as “Super Mario,” as he was dubbed by KHPG, a Kharkiv-based human rights NGO that’s been tracking him. Mariano García Calatayud is a retiree from Carlet, a small town in Spain’s Mediterranean Valencia region, who decided to move to Ukraine in 2014. On March 19, 2022, three weeks after the Russian invasion began, the Russian security services arrested him in the occupied city of Kherson. Almost 40 months later, his family and friends do not know what has become of him.

In war-torn Ukraine, there is an abundance of foreigners with peculiar life circumstances. There are mercenaries, there are men and women who pursuing love, there are idealists, adventurers, and there are people fleeing irreparable problems in their home countries. García Calatayud is a difficult case to classify. In 2014, at the age of 66, recently retired and divorced from his wife, he decided to move to Kyiv. Until then, he had been a municipal employee of city of Carlet, where he served as the local government’s construction site manager. That year, war broke out in the Donbas region (formed by the Ukrainian provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk in the east) between pro-Russian separatists and Ukrainian forces. Also that year, Russia annexed the Crimean peninsula by force.

García Calatayud had no direct ties to Ukraine. He also didn’t speak Russian or Ukrainian. Tetiana Marina Olesksandrivna, his partner, and Francisco Santiesteban, a friend and colleague at the UGT labor union to which he was affiliated, say he had an idealized vision of the country because his father or his grandfather—they can’t remember which—was a Republican activist who, after the Spanish Civil War, sought shelter in the Soviet Union, in Odessa. One of his sons, David García, claims that Mariano’s father was never in this southern Ukrainian city, but he doesn’t know whether his grandfather might have been exiled there.

“Mariano is a convinced socialist, and he was very mixed up in his head, he had an image of the USSR that wasn’t real,” says Olena Lashtova, one of his closest friends in Ukraine. “He soon realized that Russia is an imperialist power, and he became committed to helping Ukraine,” she says.

David García points out that the main reason his father moved to Ukraine was his lifelong dedication to helping others. “He mainly helped children and schools,” says his son. “Of course, we tried to convince him to return to Spain, especially as the war escalated [before the invasion], but he felt fine in Ukraine,” he adds.

Lashtova met Mariano in 2016, during numerous trips they both made as volunteer workers, delivering essential aid to the population of Donetsk. He discovered Kherson, a key center of the Ukrainian resistance near Crimea in the south of the country, through a friend, says Oleksandrivna. “He fell in love with the city because he had lived in Kyiv for a year, and it was too big for him. In Kherson, everyone knew him and he lived a more family-oriented life,” adds Lashtova.

No one from the Spanish community in Kherson remains, says his partner. She herself has moved to Scotland, where she is undergoing medical treatment and trying to find a job. The city was liberated from Russian occupation in November 2022, but its location, right on the war front, exposes it to daily attacks by the invaders. Today, according to provincial authorities, only 20% of the pre-war population remains.

García Calatayud met Oleksandrivna six weeks before the Russian invasion began in February 2022. Despite the age difference (she is 30 years younger than him), they established a relationship. But it was short-lived. In the first days of the war, the Russians entered Kherson. It was the only provincial capital they occupied with such astonishing ease, thanks to an extensive network of collaborators.

Mariano was known for participating in all the local protests against the occupation. His friends recall him always being on the front lines, heckling the Russian military. Oleksandrivna, Santiesteban and Lashtova all agree that for days they warned the Spanish volunteer to leave the city, that the invader’s security forces surely had him in their sights.

“The day before his arrest, I told him to be careful, and on St. Joseph’s Day in Valencia [March 19], he disappeared,” Santiesteban recalls. “I asked him to leave Kherson,” Lashtova says, “that it would end badly, but he was very stubborn. We spoke every day, and when he didn’t answer my call on March 19 [2022], I figured that something had happened.”

His first incarceration was in the cells of the detention center on Teploenergetikiv Street in Kherson, a place known for its torture and interrogations. Once there, his trail was lost for a year.

Much of the search for García Calatayud has been carried out by Santiesteban in Spain and Oleksandrivna in Ukraine. She and the family contacted a team of Russian lawyers who mediated with the authorities of the invading country. The first official confirmation from the occupiers regarding Mariano’s whereabouts came in April 2023, a year after his arrest: the Russian military prosecutor’s office declared that the Spaniard was in Crimea, in the Sizo-2 prison in Simferopol, under investigation “to clarify his involvement in carrying out acts that threaten the security of the Russian Federation.”

Testimonies from Ukrainian citizens who met him in SIZO-2 reported that García Calatayud was tortured with electric shocks, attacks by guard dogs, and the extraction of teeth. This was reported in an Amnesty International campaign demanding his release. Santiesteban and Oleksandrivna are pessimistic about how he may have recovered from this experience, because he suffers from heart problems. Today, if he is still alive, he is 77 years old.

The occupying authorities of Crimea reported in the fall of 2023 that García Calatayud had left the peninsula for Kherson Province (the eastern half of this region is occupied). The military document did not specify whether he had left on his own or been transferred to another prison. It also did not specify whether any charges had been brought against him.

Last clue, Moscow

Since then, few clues have emerged about his possible whereabouts, all of them tenuous. Elena Taranova, spokesperson for the legal team following his case, explains that in the multiple requests sent to the Russian authorities, they have received vague responses from the occupying military administrations in the Black Sea, Kherson, Donetsk, and also from the central offices in Moscow. “Everyone is passing the buck among themselves; the only concrete responses were those from Crimea in 2023,” says Taranova.

David García said that the Spanish National Police notified him in February 2024 that his father could also be imprisoned in the Moscow region. Taranova explains that this is a possibility, but without any concrete evidence to support it. On July 1, the family held a videoconference with the Moscow Red Cross, which pledged to try to locate the Spaniard in the Russian capital.

The Russian government has never responded to requests for information from the Spanish government or the Red Cross. Oleksandrivna claims that during POW exchanges, the intelligence services of the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense (GUR) show the returning Ukrainians more than 80 photos of missing civilian foreigners, including García Calatayud. “He’s definitely changed a lot now; just look at how the released soldiers return, so emaciated,” says her partner.

70,000 missing, 300 foreigners

Artur Dobroserdov, the Ukrainian government commissioner for persons missing during the war, stated in a press conference on July 1 that there are 300 foreigners missing, both military personnel and civilians. Many of them are Latin American mercenaries. As of May, the Ukrainian Ministry of the Interior estimates the total number of missing persons at 70,000, the vast majority of whom are soldiers. These are people like another Spaniard, Miguel Ortiz, a soldier whose comrades believe died in combat in 2023, but since his body has not been recovered, his death cannot be confirmed.

At a press conference on July 1, the Ukrainian Ministry of the Interior presented a new website that unifies, for the first time, all available documentation and data on missing persons. It is expected to be available in English and Spanish in the coming months.

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A BRITISH tourist was seriously injured after falling off a motorboat in Magaluf and being struck by the craft’s propeller.

The man, 22, was rushed to Son Espases Hospital in Palma.

The accident happened at around 5.10pm on Sunday- a few metres offshore close to the Nikki Beach Club.

READ MORE:

• British tourist falls five metres to his death in Mallorca
• Brits face attempted murder charges after mass brawl inside Mallorca tourist restaurant
• Mallorca hotel worker who suffered broken jaw at hands of British tourist says his life ‘has been ruined’

Some reports suggested that he and his group of fellow Brits were ‘drunk’.

The boat was allegedly about to capsize when the victim plunged into the water.

His friends tried to rescue him but were incapable of doing so.

Several Magaluf lifeguards responded and transferred the young Brit to a nearby pontoon as well as giving him first aid.

Paramedics treated the man for multiple injuries- some of which were deep- and they also stemmed a serious loss of blood.

Some witnesses were quoted by the Cronica Balear news portal as saying that it was an accident ‘waiting to happen’ based on the state of the British group.

Click here to read more Mallorca News from The Olive Press.

El Partido Popular ha elevado este lunes a compromiso el deseo expresado este domingo por Alberto Núñez Feijóo de formar un Gobierno en solitario si consigue una mayoría en las urnas suficiente para llegar a La Moncloa. En su discurso de clausura ante el congreso del PP, el recién reelegido líder del PP afirmó: “Yo quiero un Gobierno en solitario. El único Gobierno de coalición no ha funcionado”. Feijóo lo expresó como una aspiración o un deseo, pero no llegó a formularlo como un compromiso explícito de que no meterá a Vox en un eventual Gobierno. Este lunes, ante las dudas, el nuevo secretario general del PP, Miguel Tellado, ha terminado aclarando que sí se trata de un compromiso de Feijóo. Lo ha hecho en una declaración sin micrófonos ante los periodistas en la sede del PP, una vez terminada la rueda de prensa. “El compromiso de Feijóo es un Gobierno en solitario. No habrá un Gobierno de coalición”, ha afirmado Tellado.

El nuevo número dos de Feijóo ha hecho esta aclaración posterior a la rueda de prensa, en la que ha sido preguntado tres veces sobre si Feijóo se comprometía de forma firme y taxativa a no gobernar en coalición con Vox y ha contestado sin resolver la duda. Fuentes de Génova han precisado que el PP sí quiere que quede claro que Feijóo se compromete a gobernar en solitario, aunque no lo dijera con todas las letras en su discurso del domingo. Lo que no descarta el PP es llegar a pactos de investidura o legislatura con la extrema derecha, que según todas las encuestas sería imprescindible para que Feijóo llegara al poder si hoy se celebraran elecciones. De hecho, el líder del PP manifestó el domingo que no hará un cordón sanitario a Vox porque tiene “respeto” a sus votantes y no quiere “arrinconarles”.

A la pregunta sobre si Feijóo había expresado una aspiración o un compromiso firme de no meter a Vox en su hipotético Gobierno, Tellado ha respondido en rueda de prensa: “El presidente Feijóo explicó que él quiere un Gobierno en solitario. Monocolor, en solitario y unido. Sánchez ha sido el primero que ha formado un Gobierno de coalición, que en realidad es de colisión. España no merece un Gobierno dividido, como el que tenemos. Es evidente que España necesita un Gobierno único y unido”.

Los periodistas preguntaron hasta dos veces más a Tellado si el PP se comprometía de forma firme y taxativa a no gobernar en coalición con Vox o de lo contrario se repetirían las elecciones, y el secretario general contestó que Feijóo se había “expresado con una claridad meridiana” el domingo sobre sus preferencias de gobernar en solitario. “En España tenemos un Gobierno roto. Que no es capaz de defender una posición única, como con el plan de rearme. Eso no puede volver a pasar en nuestro país. Y por eso Feijóo defiende un Gobierno en solitario. Nosotros vamos a trabajar para conseguir ese Gobierno intensamente”.

Al mismo tiempo, Tellado precisó que esas son las “aspiraciones” del PP, pero que el partido rechaza negarse a pactar con Vox. “No estamos aquí para establecer un cordón sanitario a Vox. No estamos aquí para arrinconarles”, subrayó el secretario general, igual que lo había hecho el domingo Feijóo.

La pregunta no es baladí porque el PP también decía que quería gobernar en solitario antes de las elecciones municipales y autonómicas de 2022 y, tras exigirlo Vox como condición, terminó formando cinco Gobiernos de coalición autonómicos con la extrema derecha, además de en decenas de Ayuntamientos. Los ultras rompieron estos Ejecutivos de forma unilateral en julio de 2024, y desde entonces han aprobado al PP sus Presupuestos en unas autonomías sí y en otras no, a cambio de exigencias.

La nueva portavoz parlamentaria del PP, Ester Muñoz, no ha descartado este lunes que su jefe de filas, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, haga vicepresidente del Gobierno al líder de Vox, Santiago Abascal, en caso de necesitar sus votos para alcanzar el poder en unas futuras elecciones. “Vamos a esperar a que haya elecciones y ver los diputados que tenemos cada uno”, ha afirmado en una entrevista en Telecinco tras ser preguntada expresamente por una coalición con el partido ultra. Fuentes de Génova explican que la portavoz no ha sido más explícita en descartar la coalición con Abascal por “prudencia”, pero que sí se descarta.

Pedro Sánchez también sufrió con su compromiso de no gobernar en coalición con Podemos, que tuvo que terminar incumpliendo, aunque antes repitió las elecciones. El líder del PSOE dijo en septiembre de 2019 que “no dormiría tranquilo por las noches” con Podemos dentro de su Consejo de Ministros, una frase que le ha perseguido. No obstante, Sánchez llegó a repetir las elecciones ese año para tratar de no gobernar con Podemos. Tras la repetición, y un resultado que requería también el concurso del partido de Pablo Iglesias, transigió con la coalición.

Feijóo tiene un problema parecido con Vox. El PP afirma que su líder se compromete a no meter a la extrema derecha en su Gobierno, aunque el jefe de la oposición todavía no lo ha dicho con todas las letras para que conste en la hemeroteca.