<\/p>\n
Santiago Sanchez (R)<\/strong><\/p>\n A Spanish man trekking from Madrid to Doha, Qatar, for the 2022 World Cup has not been heard from since the day after he crossed into Iran three weeks ago, his family said on Monday.<\/p>\n Santiago Sanchez, an experienced trekker, former paratrooper and fervent football fan, was last seen in Iraq after hiking through 15 countries and extensively sharing his journey on a popular Instagram account over the past nine months.<\/p>\n The 41-year-old had previously said his intention for his trip to Qatar was to learn how others lived before reaching the first World Cup host country in the Arab world, in time for Spain\u2019s first match on November 23.<\/p>\n \u201cThe idea of the journey is to motivate and inspire other people to show that they can go very far with very little,\u201d he told the AP from Sulaymaniyah, a Kurdish city in northeastern Iraq.<\/p>\n However, Sanchez\u2019s family last heard from him in an audio message on October 2, a day after he crossed the Iraq-Iran border. He planned to go to the Iran\u2019s capital, Tehran, where a television station wanted to interview him. His next step would have been Bandar Abbas, a port in southern Iran, where he would travel by boat to Qatar.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are deeply worried, we can\u2019t stop crying, my husband and I,\u201d his mother, Celia Cogedor, told The Associated Press.<\/p>\n Sanchez\u2019s parents reported him missing on October 17, and they said Spain\u2019s police and diplomats were helping the family.<\/p>\n \u201cAfter a few days, we didn\u2019t worry about him not posting; it matched what he had said. But after eight or nine days, my daughter and his closest friends \u2026 we already began to think that we had to report his disappearance,\u201d his mother said.<\/p>\n Spain\u2019s Foreign Ministry said it had no information about Sanchez\u2019s whereabouts, adding that the Spanish ambassador to Tehran was handling the matter. Calls to the Iranian Foreign Ministry seeking comment were not immediately returned.<\/p>\n Sanchez previously spent time in Iran in 2019, when he biked a similar route to get from Madrid to Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n \u201cHe has not been making propaganda, neither for nor against any situation,\u201d his parents added. \u201cThe only thing that moves him is supporting Real Madrid \u2014 and walking to get on time to the World Cup in Qatar.\u201d<\/p>\n \n\t<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Santiago Sanchez (R) A Spanish man trekking from Madrid to Doha, Qatar, for the 2022 World Cup has not been heard from since the day after he crossed into Iran three weeks ago, his family said on Monday. Santiago Sanchez, an experienced trekker, former paratrooper and fervent football fan, was last seen in Iraq after […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1234937,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[144,1494,1529,2457,1932],"class_list":{"0":"post-1234935","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-fan","9":"tag-feared","10":"tag-missing","11":"tag-qatar","12":"tag-walking"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1234935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1234935"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1234935\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1234935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1234935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ghanamma.com\/2022\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1234935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}