A year, eight months and 18 days of not knowing where to look. His name is Simon Rodríguez and he disappeared on February 1, 2022. Retired, 78 years old, calm, smiling, much loved, happy, he left his home in El Cerro de Andévalo (Huelva) around nine in the morning. I wanted to go to the countryside. He stated this. He was seen at the Health Center half an hour later. They never saw him again.
“The land swallowed him,” says Encarna, one of his daughters (he has three children). “He was tackled, he was searched, we did everything to find him and there is nothing that led to this.” The woman returns to those fateful days and their traces with this medium, together with Prensa Ibérica’s research portal CASO ABIERTO, the last steps his father could take. “The last person who saw it places it on the walkway behind the doctor’s office.” The alert went off immediately. The search began immediately.
Tuesday, February 1. Encarna talks to her mother on the phone like every day: “Mom, how are you?” She wants to know how they spent the night. Usual. “It was 9.25 in the morning and my mother said to me, ‘Oh! Your father went out today.’” He is nervous, worried. Something is wrong. Encarna tries to take the iron away from him. “Mom, since it comes out on other days… Nothing happens, right?“. The intuition did not fail, it was not a normal day. “My mother told me: My father has been awake since dawn“He said he wanted to go to the countryside, that he wanted to take a shower, that he was going to go to the toilet so he could go…”, recalls his daughter: “He tried to persuade her, but it was at 9 o’clock.” :15, there was more or less no way: My father said ‘I’m going’ and left .
When Encarna hung up the phone at 9:30 in the morning, first search started. It was improvised fearlessly, almost unintentionally. “I called a friend, the health center, because I couldn’t stay calm when we closed…” He unconsciously activated the first rhythm. By 12:00 the Civil Guard had already mobilized.
“I’ll go get some paper for a while.”
“My father leaves the house around 9:15 a.m.,” says Encarna. “He entered the Wellness Center before 10:00.” Simon hasn’t gone out alone for 15 days precisely because he had fallen during one of his walks into the countryside. “Although he’s better now, he had some back pain, so when he left the house, one of my calls was to the Health Center. The same thing happened there,” his daughter recalls.
A center employee confirmed Simon walked in first thing in the morning. “He didn’t have a mask, so he remembers it very well. The man said to him: ‘Simon, where are you going? You know you can’t enter without a mask. “My father told him that he was going to go to the toilet for a moment, get some paper, go to the toilet because he was going to the field and he didn’t know if he would need it. IT.”
The counter was full of appointment requests. The man did not see if Simon left the center. but minutes later “an acquaintance places him behind the medical center, on the esplanade of the training center in Cabezo de la Horca, in front of the statue of San Benito, the town’s patron saint.”
After 11:00 am, Encarna left the same area with Civil Guard Sergeant. He entered the field next to Benemérita. “We began searching endlessly… Father! Father! “It’s been a year and eight months and there’s still nothing about it today.”
night vision goggles
“Simon, Simoné, the Master has disappeared.” The news shocked the town. “After half past twelve, group raids had already started to search for my father.” Simón, the town’s hairdresser, was very popular and well-known. “But it was good.”
He has health problems, but nothing serious. without diagnosis Alzheimer’s, diabetic. “They spotted it a year and a half ago Parkinson’s thick. Let’s say this is where the muscles start to atrophy. He’s not shaking very much, but it’s true that his muscles have become stiffer and it’s become harder for him to walk, so he walked the way he walked.” They decided not to let him go to the field alone, not because of his mind, but because he was not physically well.
Dogs from the Civil Guard’s Sinological Service, a helicopter, night vision goggles, up to seven patrols from the Armed Institute, three drones, neighbors on quads, ATVs, motorcycles and city bikes, and more than a hundred people on foot. Everyone went out to search.
“The vast majority think he might have gotten in the car. My father couldn’t walk that far because he had Parkinson’s disease.”
Police investigation pointed to disorientation and tragic accident. Her daughter suffers: “The truth is, that’s what we all believe. And honestly, that’s what we want to believe.” But there are gaps that are difficult to understand. “DisappearanceIt is produced in minimum time. What we don’t understand is that the faster we move… the faster it disappears. No matter how much we think about it, we can’t find any logic. “The majority of people think that maybe he got in the car, because this is not normal… My father has not been able to walk until now due to Parkinson’s disease.”
Tracksuit and sleeveless vest in shades of green, light blue shoes and hat. So he went out onto Simon Street. “Since we couldn’t find him, we think my father was carrying his wallet along with his documents.” Neither hat nor wallet. Nothing turned up. So is Simon.
In the car?
“What happened” is the eternal question that everyone asks and no one can answer. Any hypothesis hurts, but some hurt more. “There are only two possibilities here: either He was walking and fell somewhere and no matter how many times we passed by it, we couldn’t see it…”, she points painfully at her daughter, “or got into a car and someone dropped him off, willingly or unintentionally – I don’t want to think it was intentional but my father wanted to be taken somewhere – dropped him off somewhere and he left.He got lost and couldn’t come back“. Encarna doesn’t want to think that someone could have deliberately harmed him for his own sake. “He’s 78 years old, how painful it is… I couldn’t believe it.”
According to the police, there are no agents in the area who have forgotten about Simon, “I know the Civil Guard is still investigating.” He knows it too Almost all the inhabitants of El Cerro have traveled and combed the area many times in search of traces of him.. “It’s a constant ordeal,” he laments. “All I want is for him to appear and for us to rest. Let his clothes and vest be revealed. If you show me the vest, I will know whether my father is there or not, even if there are no remains… His clothes will be revealed. That’s enough. It doesn’t matter what, how or why.”
Simon, Simoné. Social, loved, hardworking. His father was the first barber in his town, and the man followed him as a hairdresser in El Cerro. “I don’t think there’s anyone in town my father hasn’t fought with.” A lover of the countryside, hunting and horses, he “rided very well.” There is no pilgrimage that does not commemorate the patron saint, San Benito. His family, neighbors and people are waiting for news. His four grandchildren await his return. Grandfather is not there.