If, in the best of scenarios, Madeleine McCann were alive, she would now be almost the same age as Tatiana Silva Tavares, a 19-year-old Cape Verdean who arrived in the Algarve a month ago to work in a supermarket in Praia da Luz.
Silva is one of the few residents who does not know who Madeleine McCann is, the three-year-old British girl who disappeared in her sleep in a residential area in the Portuguese region on May 3, 2007. 15 years later, her parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, They continue to look for her with the faith of those days, but without the unconditional solidarity they received then.
"Although the possibility is minimal, we do not lose hope that Madeleine is still alive and we can meet her," they wrote a week ago on the findmadeleine.com website.
In these three decades there have been changes in Praia da Luz (there are no longer posters or signs that evoke Madeleine and the Tapa's restaurant, where the McCanns and their friends dined the night of the event, is now called Izakaya), but the mystery about missing.
After the Portuguese Prosecutor's Office closed the process due to lack of progress, in 2020 the investigation was reactivated thanks to a German clue that pointed to a new suspect: Christian Brückner, 44, convicted of a rape in the Algarve, whom the Portuguese police investigated and discarded in 2007. A few days ago he was declared
arguido
(official suspect for the Portuguese legislation) by the Portuguese Judicial Police, thus preventing the prescription of the case (the 15 years that the law gives are fulfilled this Tuesday) and explores a new path.
If the proceedings that they plan to carry out in Germany do not allow Brückner to be prosecuted, it is likely that the case will be dropped for the second time in Portugal and Madeleine's disappearance will remain one of the mysteries that shocked the world at the beginning of the 21st century.
In Portugal there are no more lines of investigation today than the one that leads to the German, although British and German police teams work in parallel.
Van used by Christian Brückner in the Algarve and portrait of the German who has become the main suspect in the disappearance of Madeleine McCann.UK METROPOLITIAN POLICE (via REUTERS)
What has brought Brückner into the spotlight is his presence in Praia da Luz the night of the event and his history as a sexual aggressor.
“The evidence they have is that he activated his cell phone near Praia da Luz that night and that a witness heard him boast that he knew about the disappearance of the girl.
It is merely circumstantial evidence, they need to have more if they want to convict him in court,” says Rui Gustavo, a journalist for the weekly
Expresso
specializing in judicial and police information.
German agents have interrogated the suspect these days in the Oldenburg prison and have sent DNA remains found in the van he used in the Algarve to be analyzed.
It is the fourth
arguido
of these 15 years.
The first was Robert Murat, who in 2007 translated for the police, helped the press and swarmed the Ocean Club, the scene of the event, 200 meters from his home.
He went from informal collaborator of the investigators to suspect number one.
The skeleton of a large residential block now stands on the garden of his Casa Liliana chalet, thoroughly dug to search for Madeleine's body.
Murat left the Algarve and settled in the UK.
He declined to remember those days for this newspaper, but in the eight-episode Netflix documentary series he relived the "intimidating" interrogation of the Portuguese police, with pressure to admit his guilt, and his anguish in the days that followed: "He locked me up in the dark at home, crawling into a chair, wanting to die.
It was hell on earth."
Robert Murat could have been to the
Madeleine case
what Dolores Vázquez was to the
Wanninkhof case,
although the lack of incriminating evidence prevented him from ending up before the Portuguese courts (Vázquez spent more than 500 days in the Alhaurín de la Torre prison, in Málaga, sentenced for a crime he did not commit, the kidnapping and murder of the young Rocío Wanninkhof).
"Supposedly it was the doubts of a British journalist that raised suspicions about Murat," says his lawyer Francisco Pagarete.
Apart from the garden, he delved deeply into the lives of his surroundings, from his partner in his real estate business to Sergey Malinka, a 22-year-old Russian computer scientist who had set up the website for that company.
The tabloids were also cruel to him: “The Russian is a sexual predator”, headlined one in those days of 2007. They offered him half a million to talk about Madeleine.
One night they burned his car and painted the word Fala
(Speak)
on the sidewalk in red .
A night call from Murat to Malinka was the big incriminating element.
Residents of Praia da Luz applaud Gerry and Kate McCann as they leave church, eight days after their daughter Madeleine disappeared from a housing estate.
ARMANDO FRANCA (AP)
There was media, social, police and political pressure.
A global trauma.
More than 25,000 people from around the world wrote messages of support in the first two weeks.
Writer JK Rowling and businessman Richard Branson, among others, offered more than €4.5 million in rewards.
The residents of Praia da Luz (just over 4,000 in the low season and 20,000 in the summer) went out of their way to search for and shelter the McCanns, who attended mass at the Nuestra Señora de la Luz church, strolled along the beach and appeared before the press on a daily basis to stimulate research.
Kate, forever clinging to a pink cat, her daughter's favorite cuddly toy that later unnerved one of the blood-and-corpse-sniffing dogs sent from the UK to the Algarve.
The Portuguese investigation, which was led by the Judicial Police inspector Gonçalo Amaral, then focuses on Kate and Gerry McCann.
The distrust between both parties jumps to the declaration of the parents as official suspects of hiding the accidental death of the little girl and simulating a crime.
It is the main hypothesis of Amaral, who was removed on October 2, 2007 and that he ended up leaving the Judicial Police after 27 years.
Amaral wrote several books related to the investigation and clashed in court with the McCanns over the content of the first,
The Truth of Lies
.
15 years later, by email, he lists as one of the errors of the investigation "not having declared
arguidos
to the parents for possible negligence in the care of the children.
"To the parents of the missing girl and the parents of the other minors in the vacation group, who left their children abandoned in the apartments every night," she says.
Ocean Club urbanization, where Madeleine McCann disappeared in 2007, 15 years after the event.
CT
On the night of May 3, 2007, the McCanns and other friends were having dinner at Tapa's restaurant.
Their young children slept alone in the apartments.
Every once in a while someone got up to go see them.
The chronology of these visits and some inconsistencies fueled doubts about the group's version.
From the restaurant you can partially see the facade of apartment 5A, which this week was occupied by tourists.
Regarding the case and its impact on the business, the person in charge refuses to speak with EL PAÍS.
The weariness towards the media in Praia da Luz is generalized.
Even the newspaper vendor on Calle 25 de Abril dislikes the press: “It's always the same.
There is no talking for 11 months and when this date arrives, something happens.
It is better to go to the UK to ask the parents.”
In Praia da Luz, universal sympathy for the McCanns has long since disappeared.
“I do not say that voluntarily, but for me they are to blame.
It would be good if they were condemned for this antics that they did and that created many problems, "said Samuel Diogo, a real estate agent, on Thursday.
“There is a general feeling against the McCanns and what happened.
The police investigation was very poor at first, there are many details to be clarified,” says English resident James Alexander, sitting in front of the ocean.
The Atlantic landscape eventually overcame the stigma, but Alexander recalls that he was initially reluctant to invest in a town associated with something sinister.
“Perhaps in the first two years the stigma was heavy, but I think that has completely disappeared, as shown by the couples with children who run there.
When suspicions were directed towards the parents, the tabloid press published these kinds of headlines: “Police suspect Gerry is not Madeleine's father”.
"Maddie's body in parents' car."
The tabloids speculate that the girl died due to an accidental overdose of a drug intended to make her sleep.
Strangely, her two-year-old twin brothers, who shared a room, do not wake up for several hours despite the chaos that ensues in the room when Madeleine is discovered missing.
The McCanns have the honor of witnessing the first progress of the sport of hate on social media.
"They are pedophiles."
"I hope Kate dies."
messages like this.
The power to hate without incurring the responsibility of having to assume it.
How do you make the leap from empathy to cruelty?
“I've been asked that a lot of times.
The answer is simple.
The police fail to discover anything and there was great tension and angst about it all.
When this absurd and stupid theory of parents as the culprit emerged, a solution was offered.
There was no need to feel sorry for her anymore and the police problem was solved.
Many people turned against the parents, but that theory is unfounded and has been disproved," Rogério Alves, the lawyer the McCanns hired in Lisbon after being declared
arguidos , says by phone.
.
The British forensic report indicates that the DNA of the car and the apartment do not allow anything decisive to be concluded.
Amaral believes that the results have been manipulated and charges the British police.
One report claims that Prime Minister Gordon Brown made a call to ensure the inspector was removed.
The disappearance of the girl Joana Cipriano 20 kilometers from Praia da Luz in August 2004 was revived. Amaral's team led the investigation and solved the case in a short time: her mother and an uncle of the little girl were accused of the crime .
The man confessed that they dismembered her and threw her corpse to the pigs, although she later retracted it.
A court sentenced them to more than 19 years in prison.
Years later,
another court convicted several police officers for assaulting the mother during interrogation and Gonçalo Amaral for falsifying documents.
The
The Madeleine case
cast doubt on the Joana case.
The McCanns are doctors, have good relationships, and receive a lot of money in donations to fund the search.
This also feeds grudges.
One of his patrons is the Scottish millionaire Brian Kennedy, who did not hesitate to take his private plane to go to the Moroccan Atlas to locate a girl who closely resembles the English girl.
With these funds they have hired detective agencies, including the Spanish Method 3, which ended up being fired when its owner unfoundedly announced that he knew what happened to the girl, and the American Kevin Halligen, who swindled them.
Gerry and Kate were received by Pope Benedict XVI and toured internationally.
They hired communication specialists who ran their strategy like a political campaign.
They denounced four media outlets that defamed them and obtained compensation of 705,000 euros, which they allocated to the foundation that manages the search.
In these 15 years theses have been published on the subject, in Portugal and in places as distant as Chile.
The London police investigation alone since 2011 has cost more than €13 million.
Since 2007, and perhaps forever, Praia da Luz ceased to be known as the place in the Algarve where Paul McCartney spent the summer to become the place where Madeleine McCann disappeared.