He was 20 years old when his trail was lost. This February 2 has been ten years living without him. In the mind of Amalia, of Andrés -her parents- the last conversation they had with her son. He promised to have contact, not lose it. “I will come every Sunday to eat.” A new stage was beginning. She became independent. His new home, just 300 meters from what was always his home. He put some of his things in a suitcase. “I’ll take you, so I can see how everything is on the floor,” said Andrés Sr. Three friends awaited his arrival. Two days later his phone went dead. He disappeared.
On Sunday he went to his new house, on Monday he went to see his parents and on Tuesday everything faded to black. That Tuesday, Andrés Sr. dialed his phone: “let’s see how the boy is”. He gave no signal. “Hi, I’m Amalia, Andrés’s mom, his phone is off, can you tell him to call me when he gets back to the apartment?” The message was taken by one of his companions. They let the day pass. “Hello, I’m Amalia again, isn’t Andrés there?” Was not. She didn’t come back. ripped one search that has continued ever since. In her apartment, the suitcase with her clothes and her money. Missing ID and phone, but never gave a signal.
“If the police could enter communes… I am sure that a very high percentage of the disappeared would appear”, says Andrés’s father
Noble, good, family. Andrés was always a good student, affectionate, very homely. He preferred spending time on the computer than behind a ball, neither soccer nor basketball. “He never really liked sports,” recalls his mother. He finished high school, opted for computer science, “he was studying Engineering at the Polytechnic University of Valencia.” He was good at languages, he got by in German, “he studied it a bit at school”, and he was fluent in English. Last summer he did a scholarship in Ireland. He met new people, another world, other cultures. The change came.
“You have to live by nature“, he claimed. It was progressive, not alarming, until it became more evident. In December he left the race, “He said it wasn’t what he expected, he wasn’t convinced.” She embraced naturism, made vegetarian, with a view to being vegan. met a group who breathed that philosophy. He took it on. He welcomed her. “He spent a lot of time on the computer, the new circle he might have, we don’t know,” laments Andrés Sr.
He found a job at an insurance company. He signed a contract, moved in with his three companions. A new stage began, despite this, it was not good. He was looking for a place, his, but he couldn’t find it. “On Monday afternoon he told me that he wasn’t doing very well at work,” recalls his mother. “I told him that it was not mandatory to work in a place that he did not like, that could come back with us“. Andrés took the matter off, “I’m leaving, they’re waiting for me.” They did not see him again.
The pain came, the unanswered questions. The disappearance report. Amalia and Andrés ruled out the voluntary march, “he had no reason” and, furthermore, “it does not fit his way of proceeding. We thought that perhaps he was going through a complicated and indecisive moment and that someone took advantage of his vulnerability to encourage him to disappear ” Amalia digests. “The wrong person – or people – at the wrong time crossed paths with him.” Someone has been able to “deceive him, coerce him, tell him something, take him to his field”, taking advantage of the new perspective from which he looked at nature. “Mentally it is clear that he was not at his best“, also denounces his father.
Your computer and your phone
The investigation got off to a slow start. A young man, 20 years old, without latent criminal action, was classified as volunteer from the start. He was wrong. The possibility of having been seduced by an alternative guru or group came later. His computer was not looked at, he was not examined, and the geolocation of his phone was not requested. “Two things that perhaps would have been key at the time,” laments Andrés Mora Sr.
None of the roommates knew how to locate Andrés in time and space the moments before disappearing. “We thought she was at home with you,” one of them told Amalia. The three friends have maintained the same message since then: they don’t know anything about Andrés. Two days of coexistence, scarce, that they did not enjoy. The last interrogations have been recent, the police give them credibility. The researchers point to another environment, his family too: “someone, or a group, was able to seduce Andrés and take him to their land.”
Everything is open. Nothing is firm. “We know that he disappears: coerced or not coerced, drugged or not drugged… and that to do something like that my son was not in his right mind,” says Amalia.
Many doubts and a certainty, he left with what he was wearing. Her suitcase was in her room. Also the fifty euros that her parents gave her the previous afternoon. She only had her ID on her. The phone is not found, but it was turned off. Andrés Sr. has no doubt, “If I want to go to a commune or become a hippie, first of all my parents know it, and second, that I’ll take money, clothes or something to go there. I don’t disappear with what I’m wearing, right? ?”.
A commune in the Canary Islands
The investigation hit the wall. The one of silence. There is no trace, there is no where to start. His family, investigating his environment -new- came to a commune in the Canary Islands. A girl, known to Andrés, settled in it. They got the coordinates, they were provided by the young woman’s family, since before leaving they had notified her whereabouts. There was light, dim, it didn’t last long.
“They went with the photo of Andrés and a boy said that had been there until the previous month“. They held on tight to it. Over time, doubts came, “at first I believed it, but then we thought… the Civil Guard went several times, one of the last ones they told him that,” says Amalia .”I doubt about the testimony, about whether they really saw Andrés or if they wanted the Civil Guard to be no more, a ‘yes, yes, he was here but he left, don’t come back'”, regrets his father.
Petition to the Senate
The fight took a path. Andrés’ parents focused on hippie farms and communes. They would have gone to all of them, by their own feet. Impossible to cover it, “there are hundreds, almost thousands, scattered throughout Spain.” They launched a cry, directly to the Senate, to establish a census of people living in these communes. “Legally they can’t,” laments Andrés.
“If the police, the Civil Guard, could enter communes, farms… I am sure that a very high percentage of the disappeared would appear. At least it would already be known that they are there, by their will, but that they are there. But not knowing if it is there, if it is there. If he is alive, if he is dead & mldr; He is inhuman.”
“The police are involved, a lot, but there is nothing, no progress can be made.” agents and family they need indications, clues, to find some point that they did not see before. Walk the path that Andrés traced. They draw options, the result is wide: “He may be disoriented, we don’t know where or with whom, he may even be begging in the streets,” their parents lament.
“Ten years have passed, but it is very important that if someone knows something, or if someone was in contact with him, please say so, contact the police or send us an anonymous ([email protected]). We just want to know where Andres is, if he’s okay.”
Amalia, look at the photo of your son. Andrés, father, too. They fight, they do it together, to see him again: “They tell you that you have to make your life, that you have to move on. We do it as we can, but a part of you is missing“. The words are broken. Amalia saves strength for one last direct request to her son Andrés: “We are waiting for you, we love you, and we will not forget you. In case you see me, in case you read me”.
