Real Madrid fan walking from Madrid to Qatar for the World Cup goes missing

A Spanish man who was traveling from Madrid to Doha, Qatar, for the 2022 World Cup has been missing for three weeks, according to his family, who last heard from him the day after he entered Iran.

Experienced hiker Santiago Sanchez, a former paratrooper and ardent football lover, was last seen in Iraq after traveling through 15 nations and extensively documenting his adventure on a well-known Instagram account during the previous nine months.

Prior to traveling to Qatar, the first Arab nation to hold a World Cup, on November 23, the 41-year-old had earlier stated that his goal was to become more culturally aware.

In a statement to the Associated Press from Sulaymaniyah, a Kurdish city in northeastern Iraq, he said, "The goal of the voyage is to excite and inspire other people to show that they can go very far with very little."

But the day after Sanchez crossed the Iraq-Iran border, on October 2, his family received an audio message from him. He intended to travel to Tehran, the capital of Iran, to conduct an interview with a television station there. Bandar Abbas, a port in southern Iran, would have been his next stop before sailing to Qatar.

His mother, Celia Cogedor, told The Associated Press, "My husband and I are terribly concerned and we cannot stop sobbing."

On October 17, Sanchez's parents filed a missing persons report and claimed that Spain's officials and police were assisting the family.

We stopped worrying about him not blogging after a few days because it was consistent with what he had said. But after eight or nine days, my daughter and his closest friends and I already felt the need to file a missing person's report, his mother stated.

The Spanish Foreign Ministry stated that it had no knowledge of Sanchez's whereabouts and that the issue was being handled by the Spanish ambassador in Tehran. The Iranian Foreign Ministry did not immediately respond calls seeking comment.

When Sanchez cycled from Madrid to Saudi Arabia in 2019, he spent time in Iran along the same path.

His parents said, "He has not been spreading any propaganda, neither for nor against any circumstance. The only thing that makes him move is walking to make it to the World Cup in Qatar on time while supporting Real Madrid.