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Alejandro Navarro from Ronda has been missing since 3 May 2024. Although his family has not given up hope, the days are passing. This is the situation in which the close ones of the 16 other missing people in Malaga province find themselves.
These are just the active cases. In 2024, an average of two disappearance reports per day were registered in the different police stations across the province, amounting to 722 cases at the end of the year. With that, Malaga becomes the leading province in Andalucía in terms of disappearances (behind Seville with 695 and Cadiz with 656). However, the Provincial Police of the National Police assure that most of the cases concern "voluntary disappearances, without the participation of third parties". In most of them the resolution is favourable.
According to the national centre for missing persons (CNDES), last year saw a 10.91% increase in such reports in Malaga. The same upward trend can be observed in Spain as a whole (6% increase), with an average of three disappearances reported per hour, adding up to a total of 26,345 reports compared to 24,848 in 2023. Of all of these, 62.28% were voluntary runaways.
If we observe annual reports from previous years, we can notice certain trends depending on sex and age. Usually, 60% of the reports concern men and 40% concern women - a pattern which was maintained last year. It is also apparent that the rate increases as men come of age (in 2024, 64.26% concerned men over the age of 18), while in the case of women minors account for almost half of the cases - 43.7% last year.
It is expected that Malaga will have the highest rates on a regional level, given the population density of the province. But what is also common in Malaga is the rate of recidivism: of the total number of complaints registered last year, 19.25% were repeated cases, where someone went missing more than once. In other words, of the total of 583 cases, 139 people went missing more than once.
The repeat offender rate is significantly higher among teenagers. The predominant profile is male (in 69.06% of cases), between the ages of 13 and 17 (46.04%), and of Spanish nationality (74.82%). Non-repeat offenders, on the other hand, tend to be men as well (64.41%), typically between the ages of 36 and 64 (36.94%), and also Spanish (61.71%).
The president of SOS Desaparecidos (the main Spanish association that publicises these cases), Joaquín Amills, says that many of these cases concern runaways, especially among minors in protection centres. For that reason, he has asked the central government to address the issue. "Anyone who wants to leave and not have their whereabouts known by their family should be able to go to a police station. That way, if their family tries to report them missing, they’ll appear in a register of voluntary absences." With this system, the missing person's family can find peace and "unnecessary resources are not mobilised".
That the police do not start looking for someone until 24 hours have passed since the individual has gone missing is nothing more than "an urban legend", as Manuel Escalona, provincial delegate of SOS Desaparecidos and Local Police officer, says. "As soon as there is evidence that someone is missing, the alert is activated and all possible means are mobilised from that moment on," he states. According to him, "the first few hours are vital", especially if it is believed that a third party is involved in the disappearance and if the case involves vulnerable people, with illnesses or impaired mental faculties.
According to CNDES, there are 17 active reports in Malaga province. Among them are the cases of Diego, Alejandro and Tin, who have been missing since last year. Diego, 64, was last seen on 17 July in Fuengirola; Alejandro, 25, has been missing since 4 May; and Tin, 37, who takes medication regularly, disappeared in Casares on 23 March.
On 27 August 2024, two Argentinean friends went out to paddle-surf at La Misericordia beach and never returned. The pair of lifelong friends had planned to watch the sunrise while drinking mate from the board. They were never heard from again. Family members of Maximiliano (29) and Emmanuel (34) travelled from Mar del Plata (Argentina) to Malaga to stay updated. The maritime rescue unit and the Guardia Civil, with the collaboration of the Red Cross, tirelessly searched the sea, taking into account the course the two men would have followed given the wind and the currents. The operation lasted from 29 August to 11 September.
On 9 March this year - the day that commemorates people who have disappeared without apparent cause - the interior minister announced several ongoing projects related to this issue, such as the creation of official posters without the surnames to preserve the dignity of the disappeared, but with larger photographs and a QR code through which additional information could be obtained. Once the case is solved, the images are erased in less than 12 hours.
In addition, new search techniques have been implemented in recent months, such as tracing death announcements in the official state gazette (BOE) and searching in historical archives.
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