Huelva, Madrid, Sabadell… The witnesses who located Álvaro Prieto in half of Spain

Every day 61 people disappear in Spain. The majority appear shortly after, without the alert transcending beyond the local level. But the family of Álvaro Prieto, the young man who died at the Seville station when he was trying to sneak onto a train back to Córdoba, was clear from the first moment that their son's case was not just another one.. Hours after losing track of him after going out partying and running out of battery, they announced his case in the media and his photograph circulated on the networks.. The search, full of difficulties, ended up becoming the most covered in recent years.. For better and for worse.

The SOS Disappeared phone number did not stop ringing from Thursday afternoon until the day the body was found.. After spreading the photo of a tall young man, wearing beige pants and a green shirt, calls came from half of Spain. Even from other surrounding countries, such as France or Portugal. Alleged witnesses claimed to have seen him in Lebrija (Seville), Huelva, Madrid, Zaragoza or Sabadell (Barcelona). Destinations where he could have arrived by getting on a train or, as the family initially maintained, in a stranger's car.

The National Police discarded numerous testimonies, also filtered by the association. Although there were several avenues of investigation, a witness who claimed to have seen him around the Santa Justa station, near the place where the body ended up appearing, served to focus the search.. The siege, however, did not arrive in time. The operation was heading towards the Renfe workshops when the train on which he died electrocuted moved for the first time and a television camera captured the image..

The agents received hundreds of hours of recording on Sunday, including those from a low-cost gas station that ended up being decisive. In the images, which would have cleared up all doubts, you could see how the young man climbs to the top of the train, climbing through the intersection between two carriages and falls dead into the hole where he would end up appearing on Monday.. The accumulation of work prevented the Police from reviewing the video, which would have indicated the train where Álvaro Prieto was, before it appeared.

“There were 72 hours of footage for each video,” say sources familiar with the investigation, who also point out the number of calls received and the difficulties of the investigation.. The media coverage of the case, which had allowed numerous data to be collected and witnesses to be leaked, also resulted in an unpleasant ending.. The television stations were broadcast live to report on the progress of the investigation around the station and, as a result of the interest generated, it was a cameraman who accidentally recorded the body live, an unprecedented case in Spain..

The agents were going to search the area of the workshops with dogs that same morning, according to the National Police, who acknowledged having previously combed the workshops where Álvaro Prieto was located.. However, it was “absolutely impossible” to see the body from the side of the train.. When they were stopped, the two cars were very close together and from the sides, from where the agents checked the trains in the area, the body could not be seen.. Only when the train moved to make room for another one that was going to be repaired, the cars opened, the body appeared and the television camera captured it..

“Many people are unaware of the working mechanisms of a search operation,” explains David Guzmán, from SOS Desaparecidos, who defends the police action in the face of the criticism received in recent days.. “The job was done correctly. Maybe they weren't there at the right time, but they weren't wrong,” he defends.. The associations and foundations for missing persons took advantage of the media impact of the case to remember that there are still families waiting for news “for years and even decades.”. For this reason, they asked the National Center for Disappeared Persons and the State Security Forces and Bodies to “continue to redouble their efforts to alleviate this situation, giving continuity to the investigation of unsolved disappearances and promoting knowledge of this reality by the great social majority”.