What began in the spring of 1997 as an extractive tide in the Atlantic has ended, almost three decades later, in a definitive shipwreck in the offices of the Supreme Court. Five sailors based in Tenerife have seen how the judicial system has ended 28 years of waiting with a ruling that comes late and empty: the court has dismissed their cassation appeal, confirming that the negligence of CCOO in claiming their wages has legally gone unpunished.
The conflict dates back to the campaign carried out between April 28 and July 5, 1997. The workers, enrolled in the vessel Marocopesca IV, never received the wages they had earned. Upon their return, they entrusted their defense to the legal advisory of Comisiones Obreras (CC.OO.) in the Canary Islands, the trade union to which they were affiliated. The union took on the management but made a fatal error: after a ruling from the TSJ of the Canary Islands in 1999 declaring the jurisdiction of the courts of Las Palmas, CC.OO. never presented the claim there. This ‘oversight’ allowed the wage claim action to die, a mistake that the union itself attempted to camouflage for years with ambiguous communications.
The business framework: Marocopesca S.A. and Frucasa
The original claim from the sailors not only targeted their direct employer but also a complex corporate network to ensure payment. The initial lawsuit was directed against Marocopesca S.A., a company based in Rabat (Morocco), the shipowner; Frucasa, which acted as a key player in logistics and representation, to which the sailors sought to attribute joint liability for the management of the campaign; and Frigoríficos Unidos de Canarias S.A. and various individual entrepreneurs.
The goal was for Frucasa to respond for the unpaid debts of the Moroccan shipowner, but that trial never reached the substance of the matter because CCOO let the deadline expire. When the sailors realized the deception and sued the union for civil liability in 2012, claiming the 31,401.52 euros they had lost (plus interest), it was already too late.
The journey has been an exercise in human resistance against bureaucracy. In February 2003, CCOO’s advisory sent an email to the workers that turned out to be a legal trap. In it, they gave hope that the case was still alive, but the Supreme Court has now ruled that this email did not serve to interrupt the statute of limitations, since the action against the company had already been dead since 1999 due to the inactivity of the union.
After going through the Court of First Instance No. 3 of Santa Cruz de Tenerife (which ruled in their favor in 2019) and the Provincial Court (which took it away in 2020), the Supreme has put the final nail in January 2026. Although the High Court admits there were ‘contradictory resolutions’ and questionable behavior on the part of the union—reason they do not condemn them to pay court costs—the reality is that time has won the battle. The sailors, after almost half a life in litigation, are left without their 1997 wages, without compensation, and with the bitter certainty that their defense left them unprotected against the companies.
