“Don’t worry, those who say they will commit suicide will not do it, your mother can be anywhere with her new identity.” This is one of the statements Nadia heard when the investigation began. More was to come. Mariela del Valle Bertola, 46 years old. He disappeared On 26 May 2018 in Almacelles (Lleida). On the last morning, he spoke to his daughter on the phone. It was not good. Diagnosed with depression for ten years, the woman was in the grip of a debt she didn’t know how to face: “Nadia, I don’t know how to get out of this situation. I can’t do it anymore“.
He would soon write a letter asking for forgiveness. He shared photos with the people he loves most on Facebook, Smiling, Happy moments from years ago and wrote a message to her daughter: “Please forgive me, I am and always will be proud of you.” He left home and never returned.
Five years have passed. Many hypotheses on the table, none of them make any rules. “If you look for me you will find me dead,” he wrote. Everything showed that Mariela, tired of fighting, ended her life. “My mother was very bad.”
He left with a phone, documents and medication. There was a banking movement. He took the money before disappearing. The scene is confusing. “Nothing was found in all this time,” her daughter explains brokenly. “Was he really searched?” There is no development showing what he is, what he does, where he is. No clue, no sign.
May 26, 2018. Nadia goes back five years on Prensa Ibérica’s event portal CASO ABIERTO. “Saturday…I had an exam at the university.” “Nadia, who lives in Brazil, has been outside Spain since 2015, first intermittently and then permanently.”I used to go with my mother once a year, usually at Christmas“. That year, 2018, “I was planning to go in May, but we moved it to August due to exams.”
“I woke up early and saw a bunch of calls from my mom.” Mariela was not well. “Mom, calm down, everything will be resolved…” Grieving, sad and overwhelmed, Mariela could not see any light. “I’ve been waiting for you to come, but I can’t take it anymore.”“.
The conversation lasted an hour. “My mother had many loans and had a debt of 5,000 euros. Today this is an acceptable debt, but she did not have that much money back then when she was studying.” Nadia could no longer speak. “I told him that I was going to the exam, then we would talk: calm down, we will get the money from everywhere.” When he got out of class, the endless missed call list alarm on his phone went off: “Your mother isn’t here.”
The alarm was soon sounded. “Her boyfriend came home and she wasn’t there, that wasn’t normal.” He would unsuccessfully call his cell phone. I was going to write without answering. He found a note at home. Mariela apologized if there was something she didn’t do well.
“He went out to look for her,” recalls Nadia, who was waiting for news from Brazil. “Meanwhile I called and called him.” The phone had signal. “I thought: I’m not calling anymore. I don’t want the battery to die. It will be easier for the police to find him when the phone is on.” They came to complain the same afternoon lost.
“They said no, told them to come back in 48 hours so they could search.” They insisted. Mariela’s partner was on May 26 at 7:45 p.m. He announced that the missing woman was diagnosed with depression and had a 50 percent mental disability. They explained that it wasn’t looking good, as OPEN CASE confirmed: “He left a note saying goodbye.” The man added in the letter: “It says if we find him we will find him dead.” Nothing is currently enabled. “It was a voluntary walk by an adult, they didn’t take anything else into account.”
Cashier
“Nadia, you are my whole life. I love you, my daughter. Please forgive me, I am and will always be proud of you. All my life I have always fought for you. My love, I love you so much”. The broadcast is followed by heartfelt emoticons and a link to the thought: ‘When I leave’. He also changed his profile photo before leaving. She chose one with her daughter. Broken with pain, Nadia comments, “Leaving me was his farewell.”
Its first steps have been rebuilt. Mariela left the house around two in the afternoon and sent her boyfriend a text saying she was going out. He didn’t leave with what he wore He was carrying his phone, passport, documents, a backpack that probably contained some clothes, and some of his medication. The first research has begun. There was movement in his bank account: “He withdrew 20 euros from his account from a bank near his home.” Despite what it depicts, it’s not a typical suicide scene.
“The truth is, I don’t think my mother was capable of committing suicide. She may have gone to find a better life, but she killed herself… To get to that point…” Nadia asks bitterly: “So if it came to that, why didn’t they find anything? Bag , backpack, clothes? Why isn’t it there?”
five days later
“Your mother could be anywhere, even in China. living well with a new identity“. As soon as he landed, an agent told him this sentence. It still hurts. “My mother disappears on Saturday and the search begins on Wednesday because it was raining on Tuesday. You’re right about that, I could have been anywhere when they started, yeah.”
“Was there a search? I came three days later, I couldn’t see his head, but the police came to the ATM, nothing else. There were two bus stops in Almacelles. One was in front of him. There is a Chinese market and cameras. They didn’t even bother to look at them. If he had taken a bus to Lleida at that time… They didn’t look at airport departures, at least in Barcelona. They didn’t look at the borders…”, complains his daughter. “Are they looking for him today?”
Depression and electroshock
“His head says enough,” Nadia explains. The diagnosis was made when I was 15 years old. “Major depression is at its worst when the brain does not produce enough of the hormone serotonin for recovery.” The anguished young woman reflects on the years she has lived since the disease was confirmed. “The process was terrible; once or twice a year they had to accept it. He tried all the medications. “They even gave him an electroshock to see if they woke him up, to see if it would work.” It didn’t work.
“It could be anywhere,” Nadia repeats, “the same words another agent said to my grandmother: ‘If you don’t want them to find him… He left voluntarily, ma’am.“, increases with pain.
“We are talking about voluntary separation… My mother was not in a good condition. Doesn’t someone who left that note go and look? You even have to search for a dead body. They ignored it. To them, he was a person who wanted to leave voluntarily because he felt that way and that was it.”
Without data, without hypotheses, life stopped for Nadia five years ago. Friends, confidants, “I can miss everyone, everyone, but not her.” Even though he doesn’t know if he will come or not, he envisions the reunion.
His mind doesn’t stop. “If he killed himself, why isn’t he here? Is he gone? The agents say if they find him and he doesn’t want us to know, they’ll tell us the case is closed because he left voluntarily and that’s it.” Apparently he was sick again.
“What if he’s not in his right mind? What if he doesn’t know who he is? I can be like a homeless person on the street, without remembering. “My mother had memory problems from the electric shock, all the way to the brain, due to the electroshock.”
Mariela is a warrior, someone who loves conversations, walks, and coffee. He camouflaged his pain with the color of his drawings, drawing mandalas before disappearing. She always said that the name of the love of her life was Nadia. Her daughter. The same person who fought against all odds to know.