Fifty years ago, the life of the Pérez Elvira family came to a complete standstill. Their eldest son, Albertito, left school but never returned home. He was 13 years old the last time he was seen and was accompanied by his blue bicycle. This July 2nd marks half a century of the longest disappearance in Spain, that of this resident of San Bartolomé of whom his family has no trace.
"For my mother, he is her child, Albertito. That's what we called him and still call him at home," says his younger sister Belén Elvira. She was only a few months old when her family fell apart. Albertito was the eldest of six siblings, he always left school at five in the afternoon and went to the bar to help his father in case he needed to exchange money or buy something at the supermarket. However, that day at eight o'clock at night he still had not stopped by the bar.
His father's restaurant, under the name of Los Cazadores, was next to the square of San Bartolomé and formed "a triangle of distance" between the family home and the school Albertito attended. "Everything was five minutes in one direction or another away," explains his sister.
Albertito made that route daily, it was part of his routine. However, something changed that day so that he did not return to his father's bar. "That day my brother did not show up at the restaurant. It was then that my father asked a customer if he could go home and ask my mother where Albertito was," explains Belén Elvira. At that moment, his mother was scared because she thought he was at the bar. At that moment, an eternal search began trying to find her son.
The blue bicycle, which Albertito always dragged along, was not at home either. It was at dawn when his parents found the vehicle at the intersection between Güime and Playa Honda with a flat tire.
"At that time, Albertito, to earn some money, had decided to start delivering letters" and thus be able to buy the Captain Thunder comics that he liked so much. According to what the family was able to gather at that time, a taxi driver from San Bartolomé had seen the boy walking and asked him where he was going, but he thought he was delivering letters.
Nor were the usual sweeps that are now seen on television organized. "There were no sweeps, no tracking, no combing the area. All that did not exist, two people were in charge, an agent of the Civil Guard and one from the secret police, nothing more," she explains.
Over the years, there are many theories that arise in a family that has to face the unanswered questions of a missing minor. "We always thought that my brother was taken away or helped to disappear. A 13-year-old boy, no matter how awake he was, could not leave an island alone by his own means at that time. At that time, the bus, plane or boat schedules were not like today," recalls his sister.
Albertito's disappearance meant that his family collapsed. His mother suffered a "hysterical blindness" and Belén Elvira, with only a few months of life, had to be cared for by a neighbor. Her older sister had to take care of the other three siblings, pushed to be a mother before her time by the circumstances.
"Not being able to bury a son, not knowing what happened, starting a mourning, having to restart your life after the disappearance of a minor son, you never get over it," reflects his younger sister.
Nor could his siblings turn the page, the oldest was eleven years old and the second youngest, after Belén Elvira, seven. "Each and every one of them lived and had to accept not understanding those affective deficiencies of a mother, that family structure, nor understanding what was happening."
The disappearance, in front of the eyes of others
Albertito's family received the support of the residents of San Bartolomé to locate their son on the day of his disappearance. The next day the world returned to normal, but the parents and siblings of the missing child could never feel the same. However, the fact of rebuilding their lives, of continuing their path has also been criticized.
Within the hopelessness of growing up with the absence of her brother, Belén Elvira assures that encountering the cruelty of people and the "lack of empathy in the environment" can be very painful.
"Disappearances, fortunately, are not usual, it is not something that is part of everyday life. When someone disappears people do not have that empathy, we are able to judge, to value and to evaluate coldly and from ignorance someone who is drowning in an abysmal and incomparable pain because it has no precedent," she assures.
In the year 2022 alone, 22,285 reports of disappearances were filed in Spain, of which only 5,411 remained active at the end of the year.
In addition to this, the calls and hoaxes from people who say they have seen him somewhere do not stop happening. For Albertito's younger sister, it is important that those who pretend to make their relatives believe that the missing have been seen alive are prosecuted by law.
"Today, even after 50 years, my father passed away with the hope of seeing him again. We have the hope that he is alive and that at some point we can find him."
The father of the family died some time ago with the sorrow of not finding Albertito, his 81-year-old mother is still alive. The day that Albertito's father died and the family had to go to accept the will, they had to legally bury also his older brother.
"It will be 50 years since my brother disappeared. As of today, people continue to judge and make childish judgments, painful judgments of how the people of that family unit resume their lives. It's wrong, they think it's wrong, if you cry, if you don't cry, if they are afflicted," she now asserts in statements to La Voz.
The disappearance of Albertito is not in the records. Belén Elvira denounces that there was "very bad practice", "deficiencies" and that there was no "follow-up of the case over time". The answers that she did not find within the system, they looked for in other alternatives. Belén Elvira took refuge in the Association of Paco Lobatón, a famous journalist from Cádiz who has based his profession on helping families of missing persons.
"He has been with us hand in hand for many years, without letting go of all the families, especially my mother who he has treated with great affection, he has been the one who has rescued my brother's case, the one who has made it media so that it does not remain in the oblivion in which it is," she now thanks Lobatón
Belén Elvira also thanks the Canarian criminologist Félix MacGrier Ríos for initiating the steps to compare Albertito's DNA with the database of corpses. She met him trying to give diffusion to her brother's disappearance in the program Cuarto Milenio of Iker Jiménez.
"You create an image of him and they make him look like a hero. When you grow up and you realize the deficiencies of a mother's pain, a period of rage begins. If he left because he wanted to, they have stolen my childhood, if they made him disappear, they have stolen my childhood and my mother and my family, a life," laments Belen Elvira.
"I will continue fighting and raising my voice loudly so that more visibility is achieved. I will continue shouting loudly that they look for their missing," concludes Belén Elvira.