San Juan de Dios Hospital, Manresa, on the second floor. It is September 5, 1988. Jesús accompanies his brother, who is hospitalized for an asthma attack. He is thirteen years old and, feeling bored, runs away to smoke. At that time, minors were allowed to smoke, or at least approved to do so inside the facility, in a room set aside for them.
He overhears a commotion: a man dressed like a doctor allegedly escorts children away in a wheelchair. The scene that follows is described as shocking by those who remember it. They say an injection was given, and the group covered themselves with a white cloth. “These kids were my brothers Isidre and Dolors,” recalls Mari Carmen Orrit. They vanished 34 years ago, and for decades no one had offered any information. This is the first public statement from someone who was in the hospital that morning about what happened.
“Where are the children?”
“At 9:00 a.m. on September 5, the City Police knocked on the door,” Mari Carmen says. Her mother, María, was at work, caring for her children before leaving. “Where are Isidre and Dolors? Where could they be?” the officers asked as they entered the home.
“In San Juan de Dios,” the mother replied. Isidre, the youngest of fourteen, had already been hospitalized two days earlier. The penicillin given for angina had triggered a reaction, and he remained in the hospital with his 17-year-old sister Dolors for the night. “They aren’t in the hospital,” the officers told them.
“My mother put her hands to her head: ‘If they’re not there, where will they be?’” Mari Carmen remembers. She was a widow just two months prior. Both children had disappeared. Now, 34 years later, they remain missing.
Photos from Isidre and Dolors’s family album accompany this story.
After decades of investigation, in 2021 Jesús—who was a child on that floor—decided to share what he claimed to have seen that day. He spoke about it on a television program, reflecting on his memories from the same hospital corridor.
Three people
“She saw how Dolors was placed in a wheelchair with Isidre carried in arms,” Mari Carmen says. “They cried and searched for my mother.” Jesús asserts that, after 34 years, the screams remained vivid in his mind. He described following them as they moved toward the stairs, “she followed, and then she too went down,” Mari Carmen adds.
There was a plastic curtain, like the kind used in swimming pools. She says she drew it aside and the sobbing ceased when the child was injected. He was placed on a stretcher and covered with a white sheet. “My sister cried all the time. They gave him another injection and covered him with a second white sheet.” The room had several stretchers with green sheets spread about.
“There were three men, all dressed in doctor’s clothing: the one who moved the brothers in a wheelchair, the one who waited for them, and a third who behaved as if conducting an autopsy.” The last one, she says, looked at him, then instructed someone to take the child away and run off.
“My brother’s doctor said he was on vacation when he disappeared and he wouldn’t miss it for a prank,”
María’s daughter remembers how the case was handled. Up until 2021, the investigation was quiet; two small children had vanished in a hospital, and few leads existed. Police had three working hypotheses: kidnapping, escape, or family abduction. The alarm sounded early when a nurse found that neither child was in their bed at about 6:30 a.m. They realized something was terribly wrong.
Isidre and Dolors appeared in photographs shared by their siblings as a family portrait, but those pictures could not tell the full story of their fate.
The Orrit family’s search for answers stretched over decades. In 2001, María wrote to the King and to regional authorities, receiving only acknowledgments of receipt. The family’s most telling clue, Dolors’s glasses found years later in a room, later proved inconclusive when DNA testing indicated they belonged to someone older.
The Orrits describe how the absence, along with betrayals and financial strain, pressed heavily on the household. A private detective who helped the family years ago reportedly embezzled 50,000 pesetas, deepening the hardship faced by a widow with eleven children at home. The family recalls feeling overwhelmed by a system that seemed slow to act and slow to listen.
Lawsuit filed
The justice system considered the abduction hypothesis in Isidre’s case and the possibility of convincing him to leave the home in Dolors’s case. A lawsuit was filed in 2016; new testimony brought before the Manresa Court did not prompt a case reopening. “What experiential evidence exists? It remains a disappearance, not a confirmed crime,” Mari Carmen argued. Legally, there is a meaningful difference: losses are uncertain until the person is found; crimes have a defined status and timeline for resolution.
They pursued relief from the European Court of Human Rights, awaiting a response from Strasbourg. The family expressed a desire for the case to be revisited and treated as a loss rather than a forgotten incident. The siblings listed as María’s children include Angela, María Rosa, Alfredo, Mari Carmen, Engracia, Manel, Jordi, Isabel, Montserrat, Yolanda, Marta, Daniel, and María Teresa. Two names—Isidre and Dolors—remain missing, their whereabouts unknown.
Photographs accompany the story, showing the Orrit family with Isidre and Dolors highlighted in red as a reminder of what remains unresolved.