On August 30, World Day of Enforced Disappearances, the associations remember those who are missing, in the region of Murcia, currently 179 active cases, according to the data from the National Centre for the Disappeared (CNDES) from 2021.
Last year, in the community there were reports of 658 disappearances, the vast majority voluntary, most of which were resolved in days, even hours, explained the Police.
While most cases are resolved, SOS Desaparecidos or Fundación QSDglobal point out that the date serves to remind us of the thousands of disappearances, many without any apparent cause that occur in every country.
The organisation supports hundreds of families from all over Spain who never give up seeking those who are missing. At the moment there is a total of 17 active cases from the Region that appears on the association’s website. The oldest entry is that of Miguel Ángel Muñoz, who went missing 27 years, five months and three days ago in Cartagena, when he was 19 years of age. He would now be 46.
Of the 658 complaints that were filed in the Murcia community in 2021, 405 corresponded to men, 272 of them minors, and 253 to women, 189 of which were under 18.
Of the 179 active at the end of 2021, 143 were men, 88 of them minors, and 36 women, 21 of them minors).
Many of the people still being sought have been missing for more than a decade. One such individual is Juan López González , went missing in Murcia in 2007, when he was 77 years old, and who would now be 92 years old.
“There are always a number of people who want to start a new life,” the police explain, adding that “when a person is found, the first thing they are asked is if they authorise the authorities to tell their relatives where they are”. If they say no, “the complainant is informed that he has been found, but cannot be told where.” The researchers point out that this happens “in a tiny percentage” of cases.
“We have the right to disappear, it is not a crime”, say the Police.
At the national level there were 22,285 disappearances in 2021, 19% less in 2019 and 21.5% more than in 2020 , “a year conditioned by the impact of the pandemic and that, due to its exceptional characteristics, led to an extraordinary reduction in the number of cases ”according to the Ministry of the Interior.
90% of the disappearances were resolved in 2021 itself and 83% of them during the first fifteen days. As of December 31, only 1,928 cases remained active out of the total number of complaints filed in 2021.
The vast majority of children who appear are victims of parental kidnapping or minors who have escaped from internment centres, according to the Security Forces.
They are usually young children rather than adolescents and, although they are counted as missing, they are often not considered to be in danger. This does not stop them from being pursued.
The number of complaints related to foreign minors who are absent from detention, whose disappearances have occurred more than six months ago or who have reached the age of adulthood, is 470 in the Region, the second highest figure in the country, only behind the numbers registered in the neighbouring community of Andalusia (6,806).
