The search for the body intensified as rain drummed on the cemetery stones. Sonia Iglesias had vanished, and Julio Araújo, her husband, stood quiet and unyielding in the damp air while investigators combed the San Mauro family pantheon in Pontevedra. Years may have passed since Sonia disappeared, yet the question of her whereabouts hung over the grounds. The officers believed a body could be hidden among those niches, right where the family once gathered in life.
Hours after the initial sweep proved inconclusive, the case took another brutal turn. Julio Araújo was hospitalized with pneumonia complicated by lung cancer, a harsh reminder that life does not pause for a crime. He would pass away in September 2020 without providing the truth about Sonia’s fate.
The investigators had hoped to offer Sonia’s family some measure of closure, to return the body to the kin who waited so long for answers. Yet time slipped away, and the urgency never waned. The team continued the search right up to the end of the suspect’s life, chasing every lead, every whisper, every possibility.
The case later weighed heavily on the idea that divine justice would address Sonia’s plight beyond the courtroom. Regrets echoed among the officials who believed Sonia and her relatives deserved more than a search that sometimes felt incomplete. The effort to locate her remains persisted until the very end of the case, even as sorrow deepened in Pontevedra.
Araújo died with no disclosure about the location of his wife. The investigation faced an abrupt end amid the August 18, 2010 events in Pontevedra, marking a long chapter in a city that would not forget.
Sonia Iglesias, 38 years old, a mother and a former Massimo Dutti employee in the Galician city, did not report for work one afternoon. Her husband, Julio Araújo, who carried his own troubles, was the last person known to have seen her alive.
Together until the end
According to Araújo’s account, which he maintained until his death, the couple left their Campo de la Torre street home around ten in the morning. Julio drove Sonia’s Daewoo Kalos to a shop on Archbishop Malvar Street. Sonia stopped there to pick up a pair of shoes for repair, then returned to the car. A short time later, during a brief traffic delay, Sonia walked toward the center of Pontevedra but never made it to work. No one saw her again after that day, except the lingering memory of her husband.
At around 11:40 a.m., just an hour after Sonia vanished, Julio Araújo returned home and called his cousin from the landline. He had one hour to commit the crime and dispose of the body. During years of interrogations, informal chats, and wiretaps, Araújo would tell investigators, when pressed, that the problem would be theirs to solve. He never disclosed the truth until the end of his life.
I would kick him out of the house
The police uncovered a motive. Sonia had grown tired of the life she was living, and she informed him she would leave the home. He faced a hollow life with no job and a morning routine spent in bars and gambling rooms. After a family gathering on August 15, she made it clear the days of staying were over. The man faced a future with no shelter, no purpose, and a reluctant acceptance of his own loneliness.
There were whispers of a new life for Sonia with another man, a longtime resident of Venezuela. This possibility, and the pressure it brought, led investigators to term the operation a search for Sonia, her body, and the man accused of harming her by a surname that echoed a famous Spanish singer from the summer of 2010. The campaign carried the codename Operation Baute.
Wallet found in a drug town
The first clue surfaced in O Vao, where Francisco, a young drug user, found a five-euro wallet near a route leading to a drug market. Inside, documents linked to Sonia Iglesias Eirin surfaced, offering a stark thread in the evolving mystery.
For a time, investigators believed the Mount Castrove area offered a plausible route for disposing of a body. Yet further data later showed the mobile evidence was not conclusive, with only a portion of calls coming from that area.
A gray Daewoo
Security cameras in central Pontevedra captured Sonia’s car on the morning of her disappearance, a Daewoo Kalos with four doors and dark mirrors. The plates remained out of view, leaving the footage inconclusive. The vehicle’s direction pointed away from the couple’s home toward Santo Mauro Street, where an old, abandoned house stood—an estate Araújo would not sell despite strained finances.
Condom trap
Araújo consistently denied that Sonia would ever leave him. He offered a narrative full of friction and denial, claiming that even their final days together had been normal, including a moment of intimacy the day she disappeared. Investigators found a discarded condom with DNA that did not match Sonia, a clue they believed was meant to mislead them.
Sonia is dead
In 2016 a tip reopened the case at the Pontevedra police station. A source connected to Sonia’s family mentioned a confession in a restaurant in Sanxenxo by someone linked to Araújo. The testimony described an episode in which Sonia was buried in a family niche at a cemetery. The brother of the suspect allegedly accompanied others to the O Vao area, and a wallet was found nearby that helped piece together how the events unfolded.
The suspect stood silently in the rain as officers searched for Sonia’s body among the cemetery niches. He later contracted pneumonia, which hastened his decline.
The Araújo family faced a grim landscape: San Mauro housed 28 niches, with 17 officially empty. Researchers placed cameras near the tombs and the nearby abandoned house, tracing the twists of a long investigation in the rain, under the gaze of Julio Araújo, until his own health failed and he could no longer speak.
Son
In January this year, a court in Pontevedra ruled Sonia Iglesias Eirín officially dead after the sole suspect responsible passed away without speaking. Her son, now grown, can seek the closure his mother deserved and the truth about her disappearance remains central to his future. The police keep the memory alive, a stubborn thorn in the heart of the investigation. The family continues to press for answers, even as the case moves into a different phase of memory and justice.
The investigators who pursued Sonia Iglesias’ disappearance carry on, some retired, others still watching the case’s edges. The search for truth remains a stubborn thread, and the legacy of Sonia Iglesias endures. The family has pressed for accountability, while some questions linger where grace and justice intersect in a city that refuses to forget. The memory lingers, and the story continues, as if the rain itself keeps a watchful eye on the spaces where truth hides.
The memory remains alive, a constant reminder of a mother, a wife, and a life cut short by unknown hands. The city holds its breath, hoping for final clarity that seems just out of reach, and the son grows, carrying the weight of a mystery that time may never fully resolve.