The Dutch expedition cruise ship departed Tenerife after more than 38 hours at anchor off Granadilla, bringing to a close a massive international repatriation operation marked by worsening weather, complex logistics, and mounting uncertainty in its final hours.
With a prolonged blast of the horn echoing across the docks of Granadilla, Jan Dobrogowski, captain of the MV Hondius, bid farewell to the island that had hosted his vessel for nearly two days. It was exactly seven o’clock in the evening. Without a single minute of delay beyond the deadline imposed by the Spanish central government, the Dutch cruise ship finally cast off and began its voyage towards Rotterdam.
The departure came just four minutes after the final “bubble bus” convoy left the restricted port area carrying the last 28 passengers evacuated from the vessel. What had initially appeared to be an orderly and carefully controlled conclusion to Operation Granadilla had, in its closing hours, been dramatically complicated by severe weather conditions. Strong northwesterly trade winds — the notorious “Granadillero wind”, historically feared for disrupting port manoeuvres in southern Tenerife — swept into the harbour basin shortly before the operation was due to end, forcing authorities into an unexpected last-minute decision: ordering the Hondius to dock alongside the breakwater for the first and only time during the entire emergency operation.
A calm start that quickly deteriorated
The day had begun without signs of major disruption. Shortly after eight in the morning, the Hondius underwent a four-hour refuelling operation while remaining offshore, with a second vessel moored alongside to transfer fuel supplies. By midday, officials believed the repatriation process was firmly under control and heading towards a smooth conclusion.
That situation changed abruptly at around four in the afternoon.
As wind speeds intensified across the port, the Hondius — anchored roughly 200 metres from the breakwaters — began rotating violently and continuously on its own axis. A Civil Guard barge repeatedly attempted to approach the ship’s hull in order to transfer the remaining passengers to waiting buses at the dockside, but each attempt was thwarted by the force of the wind and increasingly rough seas.
Images of the cruise ship spinning inside the harbour basin, surrounded by escort launches battling choppy waters, quickly fuelled uncertainty over whether the final evacuation phase could even be completed safely.
Authorities forced to reverse course
At 5:35 p.m., Maritime Captaincy recommended an emergency change of strategy. For “meteorological reasons” and to guarantee the safety of passengers and operational teams, the authorities ordered the Hondius to dock directly at the pier, warning that continuing offshore manoeuvres risked the vessel colliding with one of the smaller escort boats.
The decision represented a direct reversal of the position defended by the Canary Islands Government since the early hours of Sunday morning. Canarian president Fernando Clavijo had previously insisted that the vessel would not dock on Canarian soil under any circumstances and would remain exclusively at anchor offshore throughout the operation. Twenty-four hours later, the weather itself forced officials to abandon that stance.
At six in the evening, the Hondius finally docked at Granadilla Port.
Twenty minutes later, the final disembarkation operation began. The remaining 28 passengers descended the gangway carrying only limited luggage, maintaining a one-metre separation from one another as they left the vessel. The atmosphere was tense but orderly. By 6:50 p.m., two “bubble buses” and two minibuses departed the dock area. At 6:56 p.m., the final operational vehicle exited the port complex.
Exactly four minutes later, at seven sharp, the Hondius departed Tenerife.
Still aboard were 26 crew members and a corpse, beginning a voyage expected to last more than three days before reaching Rotterdam.
Last-minute flight improvisation
Even as the ship prepared to leave, organisers were still being forced to improvise the final pieces of an enormously complex international evacuation effort.
The original plan called for a single final aircraft to transport both passengers travelling to the Netherlands and those continuing onwards to Australia and several Asian destinations. However, the Dutch aircraft assigned to the operation lacked sufficient capacity to accommodate everyone.
As a result, a second aircraft arriving from Luxembourg had to be incorporated into the emergency plan at short notice. That plane collected six passengers bound for Australia — four Australians, one British national, and one New Zealander — before flying first to the Netherlands, where they would connect with an Australia-bound flight that had itself been delayed due to technical problems during a stopover.
125 evacuees from 23 countries
Over the course of less than 48 hours, the operation mobilised ten charter flights departing from Tenerife South Airport to destinations including Quebec, Manchester, Eindhoven, Paris, Dublin, Nebraska, and Madrid.
During the first day alone, 94 passengers were repatriated.
The initial flight, departing around noon on Sunday, transported fourteen Spanish nationals to the Gómez Ulla Central Defence Hospital in Madrid. Additional flights subsequently departed for France with five passengers, Canada with six, and the Netherlands with 26 passengers of various nationalities.
Throughout the afternoon and evening, further staggered departures included 22 British passengers, two Irish nationals, three Turkish citizens, and 17 Americans. The final aircraft of the first day — bound for the United States — did not depart until close to 10 p.m., becoming the most delayed transfer of the entire operation.
The remaining 28 passengers departed on Monday.
In total, 125 people from 23 different countries were evacuated during one of the largest emergency repatriation efforts carried out in Tenerife in recent years.
“Mission accomplished”
Spanish Health Minister Mónica García personally oversaw the conclusion of the operation from the docks at Granadilla. “Mission accomplished,” she declared moments after the Hondius disappeared from the harbour.
“The ship, as you can see, has just set sail,” she told reporters, while praising the work carried out by emergency services, security forces, public institutions, and the people of the Canary Islands.
García defended the controversial last-minute docking as a purely technical necessity caused by deteriorating weather conditions.
“The weather conditions made offshore disembarkation impossible, so it was decided to dock for one hour with all safety measures in place,” she explained, while also insisting that “the Government of Spain has fulfilled its duty with transparency and humanity”.
International praise for the operation soon followed. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus thanked Tenerife for the “compassion and solidarity” shown during the emergency response, praising the way the operation had been handled and remarking that it had been carried out “with style”.
Hours earlier, Ursula von der Leyen had also congratulated the Spanish authorities for what she described as the “rapid and efficient” evacuation of the cruise ship.
A positive hantavirus test casts a shadow
Even as authorities celebrated the apparent success of the operation, concern resurfaced when news emerged that one of the fourteen Spanish nationals isolated at Madrid’s Gómez Ulla Hospital had returned a provisional positive PCR test for hantavirus, despite showing no symptoms.
Spain’s Ministry of Health stressed that all other tests had returned negative results and stated that definitive confirmation would be available in the coming hours.
Meanwhile, the MV Hondius continues its journey towards Rotterdam, where the vessel and passengers’ luggage will undergo full disinfection procedures. By the time the ship reaches the Netherlands, more than three weeks will have passed since it last departed from a port under normal circumstances.
For 48 hours, Granadilla became the centre of international attention — a port transformed into the focal point of a highly sensitive multinational emergency operation. Now, slowly, it begins returning to normality.
