“We were very young when he disappeared…” Alba retreats. Everything stops in 2013 when he and his sister Clara receive the worst news: my mother is not there. “He was 7 and I was 9… It hurts, Missing your mother hurts so muchBut there were things we didn’t know then.” Ten years ago, Alba and Clara were waiting at the school gate for their mother to pick them up. Did not come.
is called Cristina García and disappeared on November 4, 2013 in Gandía (Valencia). The investigation started late. There was no raid; interrogations, yes. There is a possibility of a group of suspicious people disappearing in the area on the same day, accident or voluntary departure. Too many hypotheses, no progress.
“Overnight the police stopped reporting to us,” says the eldest daughter. The search has been exhausted. “We’ve learned to live with it,” Alba laments. No answer, no clue, no movement. Cristina wasn’t there, she wasn’t going to be there… “A mother is always needed, but we moved forward with the love of family, we had to survive.”
Did they imitate you?
Ten years later, everything was removed due to legal paperwork. “Due to the inheritance of my mother and grandfather, we had to declare my mother dead,” Alba explains to OPEN CASE. “Ten years have passed, the case is closed…”. The process was immediately paralyzed when a judge was present in the courtroom: “They told us it couldn’t be done because They found a bank account in my mother’s nameIt was opened by someone in 2015 and received grant money until April of this year. Cristina’s family was shocked. “We found out in 2023,” Alba laments. Nobody told them anything like “this account was opened eight years ago.”
“This is what eats people up the most…” pain, despair and uncertainty settle back in the house. “It could be a bank error, it could be itself, it could besomeone impersonating your identity…”. The mind of Alba, who is now of age, and the rest of her family does not stop. Years later, after learning to live with it, they return to their old ways: “Everything was taken from us. Could we have done something if they had told us 8 years ago? This is starting over again.”
Missing
November 4, 2013. Cristina goes to her mother-in-law’s house. Daughters Alba and Clara spent the afternoon there. They just finished dinner. Cristina is not having her best momentSo it was agreed – more or less – that the little ones slept there and that he was the one who went to pick them up from school the next day. “We were waiting for my mother, but she didn’t come.”
The search began secretly at first. “At that moment, we waited a while to complain, we waited to see if he would get angry or walk away. There was a small argument between my mother and my grandmother. My mom asked us to go home with her…” Alba remembers. “I said, ‘Hey, did you talk to Cristina?’ ‘No’. “The alarm went off for my aunts and they eventually went to the police station and reported me,” he reconstructs.
A few Romanians and a Bulgarian
Cristina García is 34 years old. I was going through a difficult time, one week off At Dulcesol, the company he worked for in recent years. He had been on medication and had been suffering from depression since his father’s death a few months ago. When they saw him for the last time, “arguing” with her mother-in-law, wants to be with her daughters, but it’s bedtime. They decide no. He agrees to pick them up from school, saying, “He’s leaving a little angry.” They don’t see him again.
The agents took note of everything. The investigation has begun. Two ways: First, simple, Cristina would leave of her own free will. “To be honest, we never chose to do this in our own home,” says Alba. “My mother He argues with my grandmother because she wants us to go with her… “He wasn’t going to leave us.” And a second possibility: that something destroys it: “One person, one accident…”. There was a piece of information on the table that made the researchers suspicious.. Some eyewitnesses stated that on the day the woman disappeared, a table at the bar where she was proven to have entered was occupied by “a group of Romanians and a Bulgarian”. But yesand denied having anything to do with her disappearance.
Warning signs, dissemination of photos, media and many testimonies. Few people attended, none allowing the police to reconstruct what might have happened. “The different statements definitely did a lot of damage. The police lost a lot of time because there were people who went and said, ‘I saw him at such and such a place at such and such a time’, ‘I saw him at such and such a place…’ They didn’t know how to follow his trail. It can’t happen that somewhere at 22.30 you see five minutes later at the other end of Gandía.” Nothing gave way to Cristina. “The case was hidden in a drawer.”
After 10 years: grant
Alba and Clara have grown up. Everyone moved on as best they could. For ten years, no one gave any clues. Silence, emptiness. They noticed this at home, maybe Cristina wouldn’t be there anymore. “By June of this year,” Alba predicts. Everything changed this summer.
“We got an apartment because of my grandparents, and my sister and I tried to get the paperwork sorted. getting money from my mother. In order to sell the flat, we had to declare him dead, 10 years had passed, the case was closed…” They went to the police. “When we got there, there was a judge and after asking a few questions, They told us we couldn’t sign that paper. because they found a bank account in my mother’s name and she was receiving aid until April.
The whole family was shocked.. “A mistake? Is she my mother? Could someone have done something to her and usurped her identity?” Suspicion and influence increased seconds later. “An account was opened eight years ago…? Was it opened in 2015 and the family found out about it in 2023? What if they had told us about it eight years ago…maybe we would have found it?” Thousands of doubts that they thought they had overcome have resurfaced.
His identity also disappeared
Cristina’s family I tried to find the office, being,:”Due to data protection they couldn’t tell us anything.” Deposits and withdrawals were made. He also tried to find out what kind of assistance Cristina García or someone on her behalf received, given that the management approved it: “same result, we were not given this information either.”
A new legal battle begins: “We are tied, we can’t do any more.” He condemns the police for “nothing moves.” “That day to disappear My mother’s ID was with her. “They might be faking this identity… We’ll have to find out who that person is, why they have it… I don’t know,” he laments helplessly.
Alba stops and speaks again: “What if it was she who signed the documents, but not voluntarily? If someone was threatening her with taking away this subsidy… What if…?” The doubts do not end. “This is a police investigation that did not take place. No matter how hard we try, we cannot succeed. There is new information, the only one for all these years“But it looks like our case was lost from the first minute and they left us there in a drawer.”
Alba gives voice to everyone’s struggle. It all goes back to the beginning, there is so much pain. Cristina, the woman with long, straight, black hair, was no longer there. Social, fun, familiar, suddenly comfortable, full of character but very good-hearted. “He adored us, no matter how bad things were, he was always smiling at us both.” Ten years later, they still need their mother. Know if he was there, if they did anything to him, if he walked away. The search never stopped. The absence hurts even more because they know it could be close and no one warned them.