All Galicia mourns.

21 fishermen from the northwestern Spanish region have died in the icy fishing grounds.

The relatives did not want to give up hope until the night of Thursday, when sad clarity prevailed: the Canadian rescue workers stopped their search off Newfoundland after 36 hours.

Not only for Galicia, but for the whole of Spain, it is the worst shipwreck since 1978. At that time, a fishing boat went down off the Galician coast;

27 people lost their lives.

Hans Christian Roessler

Political correspondent for the Iberian Peninsula and the Maghreb based in Madrid.

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The waves were up to ten meters high, temperatures were freezing and visibility was minimal.

From hour to hour the hope of recovering survivors from the North Atlantic sank.

Twelve fishermen from the Spanish trawler "Villa de Pitanxo" remain missing.

The steel ship made two automatic emergency calls 450 kilometers south-east of Newfoundland early Tuesday morning.

Then it sank with 24 men on board for reasons that are still unclear.

Only the Spanish captain and two fishermen from Spain and Ghana were saved alive.

In addition, the rescue workers, supported by civilian ships, recovered nine bodies.

According to Spanish information, a total of 16 Spaniards, five Peruvians and three Ghanaians were fishing on the deep-freeze trawler from Marín.

Mayor María Ramallo said that February 15, when the terrible news came, will never be forgotten in Marín - like the many other shipwrecks before.

Spanish Agriculture and Fisheries Minister Luis Planas said: "People by the sea know what it's like to live in uncertainty, it's part of our DNA, like the salt water, fishing and seafaring culture." The Spanish Parliament commemorated the drowned sailors with a minute's silence.

A badly paid and dangerous job

Galician fishermen are all over the Atlantic.

From the Moroccan and Mauritanian coasts to the North American coast.

It is one of the most important but also one of the most dangerous fishing grounds in the world and is rich in cod, halibut and redfish.

The fishermen need five days to travel the 3,000 kilometers from Galicia.

The Spaniards bring around 5,000 tons of fish back home from there every year.

It used to be much more: in the 1970s, 120 ships with 5000 Spanish sailors fished there.

Today there are only about twenty left.

Overfishing led to Canada expelling the Spanish fleet from the 200-mile limit.

In the 1990s, the two countries faced each other over the confiscation of a Spanish boat in the so-called Halibut War.

Today all freezer trawlers come from Galicia.

They can accommodate 20 to 30 crew members, who are often on the road for months.

It's a backbreaking, low-paying and extremely dangerous job.

Working days last up to 18 hours.

Young Spaniards are less and less drawn to the boats.

Their places are taken by migrants from Africa and Latin America, as well as on the sunken "Villa de Pitanxo".