Captain Carlos Pérez Labajos, Professor at UniCan, Passes Away

Captain of the Merchant Navy Carlos Ángel Pérez Labajos (La Seo de Urgel, 1952), professor in the Department of Navigation Sciences and Techniques at the University of Cantabria (UniCan), passed away early this morning in Santander, his city of residence since 1985.

An tireless worker and active advocate for quality nautical education and its teachers, in the late 1980s he staged sit-ins at the General Directorate of the Merchant Navy to improve the salaries of staff.

He developed his professional career as a merchant marine between 1973 and 1982. In 1983, he began his teaching career at the Higher School of Civil Navigation in Santa Cruz de Tenerife, moving to Santander in 1985 after obtaining the chair in Marine Economics. All his teaching and research activities have been carried out in the field of Marine Economics.

As the lead researcher of the R&D+i Group at the University of Cantabria “Ocean and Coastal Planning and Management,” he participated in 24 research projects. He is the author of over a hundred technical and scientific publications, including ten books, and has served as an evaluator for five international impact scientific journals and editor of the Journal of Maritime Research (since 2000).

Professor Pérez Labajos actively participated in the curricula of diploma, degree, and doctoral programs. For years, he was the national coordinator of the interuniversity doctoral program in Nautical Engineering, Marine, and Naval Radioelectronics from the universities of Cantabria, Oviedo, the Basque Country, Polytechnic University of Catalonia, and La Laguna, and director of the specialist course in Maritime Business and Associated Logistics, in academic collaboration with the company Bergé.

An active defender of university standards, creator of master's programs, and involved in numerous thesis and job placement committees in Nautical schools and faculties of Economic Sciences, he was a full member of the Canary Academy of Navigation Sciences, the Maritime Forum of the Canary Islands, and the board of directors of the Cantabrian Professional Association of Merchant Navy Captains. Between 2008 and 2012, he was the director of the Higher Technical School of Nautical Studies at the University of Cantabria.

Brother of José Ana and Fernando Pérez Labajos, a historical figure of the jet-foil from Compañía Trasmediterránea, Carlos Ángel had not yet turned 70 years old “and died as he wanted: with his boots on,” highlights his friend and colleague Daniel García Gómez de Barreda, professor of Navigation Sciences and Techniques at the University of Cádiz.

Rest in peace.

Photo: provided