“Don’t worry, anyone who says they’re going to commit suicide doesn’t do it, your mother can be anywhere with a new identity.” It is one of the phrases that Nadia heard when she started the investigation. More would come. Mariela del Valle Bertola, 46 years old. He disappeared on May 26, 2018 in Almacelles (Lleida). That morning, the last one, she spoke to her daughter on the phone. It wasn’t good. Diagnosed with depression for ten years, she was haunted by a debt that she did not know how to face: “Nadia, I don’t know how to get out of this situation, I can not anymore“.
A little later he would write a letter, asking for forgiveness. He shared photos with the people he loved most on Facebook, smiles, happy moments from years ago, and wrote a message for her daughter: “forgive me, please, I am and will always be proud of you.” He left home, never returned.
Five years have passed. On the table, many hypotheses, none rule. “If you look for me, you will find me dead,” she wrote. Everything seemed to indicate that Mariela, tired of fighting, had put an end to her life. “My mother was very bad.”
He left with a phone, documentation and his medication. There was a banking movement, he took money before disappearing. The scene is confusing. “In all this time nothing has been found,” explains her daughter, broken. “Was it really sought?” There hasn’t been any trailer that draws out what happened, what she did, where she is. No clue, no sign.
May 26, 2018. Nadia goes back five years with CASO ABIERTO, Prensa Ibérica’s events portal. “Saturday…I had an exam at the University.” Based in Brazil, first intermittently and then permanently, Nadia had been outside Spain since 2015. “I went once a year with my mother, usually at Christmas“. That year, 2018, “I was thinking of going in May, although due to exams we moved it to August.”
“I got up early and saw a lot of calls from my mother.” Mariela was not well. “Mom, calm down, everything will be solved….” Dejected, sad, overwhelmed, Mariela saw no light. “I was waiting for you to come, but I can’t take it anymore.”“.
The conversation lasted an hour. “My mother had taken out several loans and she owed 5,000 euros. Today it is an acceptable debt, but at that time, studying, she did not have that amount.” Nadia couldn’t speak anymore. “I told her that I was going to the exam, that we would talk later: stay calm, we will get the money from anywhere.” When she left class, an endless list of missed calls on her phone sounded the alarm: “Your mother is not here.”
The alarm was soon raised. “Her boyfriend came home and she wasn’t there, she wasn’t normal.” She would call her cell phone without success. She would write, without response. She found a note at home. Mariela apologized if there was anything she had not done well.
“He went out to look for her,” recalls Nadia, who was waiting for news from Brazil. “Meanwhile, I called her and called her.” The phone had a signal. “I thought: I’m not calling anymore. I don’t want the battery to run out. With the phone on it will be easier for the police to locate her.” They came that same afternoon to file a complaint for disappearance.
“They said no, to come back in 48 hours so they could search.” They insisted. It was 7:45 p.m. on May 26 when Mariela’s partner He explained that the missing woman had been diagnosed with depression and had a 50% mental disability. They explained, as OPEN CASE has verified, that the situation was not looking good: “he left a note saying goodbye.” In the letter, the man added, “it says that if we find her, we will find her dead.” Nothing was activated at the moment. “It was a voluntary march, by an adult, they did not take anything else into account.”
The cashier
“Nadia, you are my entire life. I love you daughter. Forgive me, please, I am and will always be proud of you. I always fought for you my life. My love, I love you so much”. The publication is followed by emoticons with hearts, and a link to a reflection: ‘When I leave’. Before leaving, he also changed his profile photo. He chose one with his daughter. “It was the farewell that he left me,” Nadia reviews, broken with pain.
His first steps were reconstructed. Mariela left the house around two in the afternoon, she sent a message to her boyfriend saying that she was going to leave. She didn’t leave with what she was wearing, He was carrying his phone, passport, documentation, a backpack with possibly some clothes, and some of his medication. The first investigations began. His bank account showed a movement: “he took out the 20 euros he had in the account at a bank near home.” It’s not a typical suicide scene, despite what she drew.
“The truth is, I don’t see my mother capable of committing suicide. She may have left to look for a better life, but taking her own life…getting to that point….” Nadia asks with pain: “and if she got to that point, why didn’t they find anything? The purse, the backpack, the clothes? Why isn’t she there?”
Five days later
“Your mother can be anywhere, even in China, living well with a new identity“. An agent said the phrase to him as soon as he landed. It still hurts him. “My mother disappears on a Saturday and the search starts on a Wednesday, because on Tuesday it was raining. She’s right about that, when they started I could be anywhere, yes.”
“Was there a search? I arrived three days later, I didn’t see the beginning, but the police arrived at the ATM and nothing more. There were two bus stops in Almacelles. One was in front of a Chinese bazaar and they have cameras. They didn’t even bother to look at them. If she took a bus, which at that time left for Lleida… They did not look at airport departures, at least in Barcelona. They didn’t look at borders…”, laments her daughter. “Are they looking for her today?”
Depression and electroshock
“His head said enough,” explains Nadia. The diagnosis came when she was 15 years old. “Major depression, the worst there is, when the brain does not produce serotonin, enough hormones to be well.” The young woman, with pain, reviews the years she has lived since the disease was confirmed. “The process was horrible, once a year or two they had to admit her. He tried all the medications. “They even did electroshock on his brain to see if they woke him up, to see if it worked.” It didn’t work.
“It could be anywhere,” Nadia repeats, “the same words another agent said to my grandmother: ‘if they don’t want them to find it… She left voluntarily, ma’am“, he reproduces with pain.
“Talk about voluntary leaving… My mother was not well. A person leaves that note and they don’t go looking? You have to look for even a body. They ignored. For them he was a person who wanted to leave, on his own merit, because he wanted to and that’s it.”
Without data, without hypothesis, life stopped for Nadia five years ago. Friends, confidants, “I could miss anyone, anyone, but not her.” He visualizes the reunion, although he doesn’t know if it will come.
His mind doesn’t stop. “If she killed herself, why isn’t she here? Did she leave? The agents say that if they find her and they don’t want us to know, since she left voluntarily, they will tell us that the case has been closed and that’s it.” Obviously, she was sick, once again.
Related news
“What if he’s not in his right mind? What if he doesn’t know who he is? I could be like a homeless person on the streets, without remembering. “My mother had memory problems from the electric shocks to the brain from the electroshock.”
Mariela, fighter, lover of conversations, walks, coffee. She camouflaged her pain with the color of her drawings, she painted mandalas before disappearing. The love of her life, she has always said, is called Nadia. Her daughter. The same one that fights against all odds to know.