Domingo Trujillo, the captain of the Talía search and rescue vessel, said that although his crew knew a woman on the boat was pregnant, they had no idea that she had already given birth.
“The surprise was [finding] a totally naked baby who was born 10, 15 or 20 minutes earlier,” he told the state broadcaster TVE. Trujillo said the mother was lying on the floor of the crowded boat while the baby was in the hands of someone else near her.
“I covered him up, took him here [to my chest] and patted him so that he would stop crying,” the captain added.
Medics onboard recommended the mother and baby be transferred to a hospital by helicopter.
“It being Three Kings Day, this was the best gift we could have received,” Álvaro Serrano Pérez, the commander of the helicopter, told Reuters.