Jacobo Soteras and Antoni Sosa, two men with a single destiny: to ensure the safety of all those who venture into the imposing natural surroundings of the Serra de Tramuntana mountain range

Jacobo Soteras is 48 years old and his life is the mountain, where he has worked as a specialist since he was 25. The chief corporal of the Civil Guard’s Special Rescue Group for Mountain Intervention (GREIM) is a specialist in micro-blasting in caves, which has taken him beyond the borders of Mallorca to participate in highly complex rescues. He was part of the works to recover the body of Julen, a two-year-old boy who fell into a 71-metre deep prospecting well in Totalán, Málaga, in 2019, and who was rescued lifeless after 13 days. A titanic effort that did not have a happy ending: “You feel frustrated, impotent. You build up a kind of armour, but you are human. Many times I’ve had tears in my eyes when we couldn’t get there in time. 

Bombers de Mallorca, to the rescue in the Serra

Antoni Sosa is a corporal in the Mountain Rescue Group of the Mallorca Fire Brigade (GRM) and works in the Sóller fire station. His colleagues consider him to be one of the best mountaineers and rescuers in his group. He is 44 years old and has been with the GRM for 16 years, but his passion for the mountains was awakened at the age of 3 when he spent his summer holidays in Balitx d’Avall, in Fornalutx. “What motivates us is helping people,” he says. “On one occasion, I went to a rescue on the Puig Major where one of the sons fell off the cliff and the father went to look for him, and ended up in a serious condition. When we arrived, he said to me: ‘I’m in your hands, I don’t think I can last another half hour’. In those moments you have emotions running high and you feel a great personal satisfaction in saving that person’s life”. 

In view of their undeniable feats, the two say humbly: “We are not superheroes. We are rescue professionals. It’s our job. But their angelic halo crowns them: “In a rescue in the Pas des Duro, in Escorca – says Sosa – when I arrived I asked them how they were, and they answered me with a rapt face: ‘with this white light that I see behind you now you are our God, our saviour'”.

You can see this and other reports in the spring-summer edition of Mallorca Global Mag, available at newsstands.