Body of man swept out to sea in Galicia washes up on beach

One of the fiercest storms of the winter on Spain's northern coasts swept three members of the same family out to sea in the A Coruña municipality of Valdoviño on Monday afternoon.

The emergency services responded to a call shortly before 7pm and launched search and rescue teams to comb the area for a middle-aged man, his brother-in-law and the daughter of one of them. When the search operation resumed in the early hours of Tuesday, the body of a man was found on the beach, the Coast Guard reported.

A fourth family member, a 20-year-old cousin of the missing girl, was able to escape the tidal surge although she was hospitalized.

"It is an exceptional storm," said a member of the search and rescue team. Winds of up to 80km/h and 12-meter-high waves have been battering the Galician coasts for some weeks as an area of extremely low pressure works its way across western Europe. The area where the incident occurred, the lighthouse at A Frouxeira, in Meirás, is popular with locals and tourists precisely because the full power of the Atlantic is often on view.

Although the family knew the area well, it is likely that they approached the cliffs to watch the waves. "No matter how often we warn of the danger, there are people who come to look," said the mayor of Meirás, José Antonio Vigo.

The entire Galician coast remains on a red severe weather warning and the regional government has issued a call for residents to exercise extreme caution on coastal paths and to avoid getting too close to the ocean.