At about 12.15pm on Wednesday, 4 November 2026, one worker fell into a slurry pit at a pig farm in the El Salobrar area of Pitillas, Navarra. Two colleagues went in to try to rescue him, but all three became trapped in the oxygen-deficient atmosphere and died.
An uncle and nephew, aged 61 and 38 respectively, were among the victims. The third worker was 31.
Navarra's emergency management centre dispatched firefighters from Tafalla. A technical rescue team and a rescue helicopter also went to the site. A medical team came from Caparroso. An advanced life-support ambulance and a medical helicopter were also sent, along with an emergency psychologist and Foral Police officers. The rescuers could not save the workers. The Foral Police opened an investigation to establish the circumstances of the occupational accident.
All three men lived in Caparroso, according to municipal sources cited by Agencia EFE. UGT Navarra expressed condolences to their relatives and colleagues and called for an investigation to establish what happened.
A six-union workplace health body in Navarra has called a demonstration for Friday. LAB also expressed solidarity with the victims' families and said 67 work-related deaths had been recorded in Euskadi and Navarra so far this year. The separate Urda rail crash report concerned a transport disaster rather than a workplace accident.
Agencia EFE described the Pitillas incident as Spain's deadliest accident of this kind since April 2003, when four members of one family died from toxic-gas inhalation at a livestock farm in Los Dolores, Murcia.
