Mijas Town Hall hosted on Saturday an event dedicated to those who disappeared for no apparent reason. Two manifestos were read to remember these people and to ask for more support for the families who suffer these situations. The first text, read by the mayoress of Mijas, Ana Mata (PP), belonged to the Spanish Federation of Municipalities and Provinces, while Carmen Gómez, patron of the QSD Global Foundation and sister of the disappeared Juan Antonio Gómez Alarcón, gave voice to the second manifesto, written by the same group.
It was a modest and emotional act, in which the cases of the five people who, disappeared one day without apparent cause in Mijas between 2008 and 2012, were remembered through a video produced by Mijas Comunicación: Amy Fitzpatrick (January 2008), Isabel María Cortés (August 2008), Juan Antonio Gómez Alarcón (July 2010), Francisco Ruiz Galán (February 2011) and John M. Leach (August 2012).
"For the relatives, it is very hard to bear the continuous suffering of not knowing where our loved ones are and, in many cases, not knowing why they have disappeared. It is something that marks you for life", said Carmen Gómez once again, adding that "one of the reasons why we want 9M to be known is because this tragedy can happen to anyone, but many of these cases can be avoided and prevented".
Every year about 20,000 disappearances are registered in Spain, around 60 every day. Ninety per cent of the reports are solved within the same year, but 10 per cent remain active over time. It is surprising to know that 63 percent of the total number of reports correspond to children and young people between 13 and 17 years old, "that is why it is important that schools develop programmes to try to detect problems among minors and that the public health system also puts emphasis on mental illnesses... There are many issues that are related to disappearances and, if we work on them, many cases could be avoided".
In this sense, the mayoress of Mijas, Ana Mata, also highlighted the elderly people who, due to their advanced age or illness, become disorientated and end up lost. "We have to work on all of this from the administrations and with all citizens, because together we must create a social protection so that these situations do not occur," said Mata.
Likewise, the mayoress defended the importance of increasing human and material resources when searching for a person, especially during the first hours of their disappearance. In this sense, she advocated the development of a more ambitious action protocol by the central government, in coordination with the Security Forces, "and that we can act in a preventive and immediate way, so that the finding of that person does not become impossible and also so that it is not forgotten".
The event was also attended by the grandmother of little Lucía Vivar, who in 2017 was found deceased next to the train tracks in Pizarra. "We believe that the way of searching for people must change and justice should also change. The only thing our family is asking for now is justice, we can't do anything else now, because we need to know what happened to our little girl and why it happened", she concluded.
Share it with this link: https://mijasint.com/?a=30148
