As the rest of the world follows every spade-thrust of police searching for Madeleine McCann in Praia da Luz, the white heat of fury among locals is palpable. It’s not that people don’t want closure. Everyone wants to know what happened to Madeleine McCann on that fateful family holiday seven years ago. It is simply that no one can see any reason for the high-profile police search being called now, just as the tourist season gets underway.
“Holiday bookings have been cancelled” ... “People are staying away” ... “The village is being crucified” ... These are just some of the comments from residents and business people alike, who all say: “If the official line is ‘there are no guarantees, why the heck didn’t they come here in the winter?”
But the worst of it is that no one feels “strong enough” to come out on full record.
“It’s too political,” said one resort manager. “I am sorry, I don’t want to say anything.”
It is always like this, in this particular case where the official line has been the only line since the very beginning.
But perhaps things are changing ... One local resident, who came out fighting weeks ago but at the time asked to remain anonymous, seems to think so.
She has at last agreed to have her first name published. “Businesses are beginning to fight back,” Nana told us on Wednesday. “You should have heard the lady at the kiosk at Baptista supermarket yesterday. She’s fuming.”
Nana has seen herself become something of a celebrity for speaking out since police teams alighted on the village at the beginning of the week. She has appeared on Sky News, BBC and was being interviewed by a German reporter for German TV as we went to press.
“Luz is on the turn,” the Dutch long-time resident told us. “People are starting to ‘take back control’ and say: How dare they? How dare they come here and tell us that this needs to be done now - just as the village tries yet again to celebrate the best of what we have: the summer.
“It cannot be because the ground is soft. It is as hard as a rock! In the winter it would be softer - but no, of course, they come now. Why? We have to ask why?”
Business people who invariably ask to remain nameless complain of “crucifixion” as the world’s media follow police operations on the ground in various sites around the village.
According to press reports on Wednesday morning, search teams are planning to move on to the drainage system around the Ocean Club, which was being excavated at the time Madeleine went missing.
All these sites were investigated during the original police search but Scotland Yard’s crack team have said that nonetheless they need to go over old ground in order to rule things out.
Talking to reporters before the search began, London Police Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley said: “I want to keep expectations down. You shouldn’t read into this that this is necessarily an end game or about to be a breakthrough of anything like that.”
Intriguingly, the Portuguese press publicised a “new theory” in its update on the excavations on Wednesday.
“Scotland Yard has moved on to the belief that Madeleine was killed in the apartment and her body hidden in the area around the Ocean Club,” writes Correio da Manhã.
“This is exactly what that poor policeman in charge of the original investigation thought,” Nana told the Resident.
“I have never met Gonçalo Amaral, but it is time people realised that seven years on, his original police work appears to have been solid.”
Amaral won a legal round in the ongoing defamation case brought out by Madeleine’s parents Kate and Gerry McCann against him last week (see story on this page), meantime, police efforts around the little village in the sunshine continue, with another tent being erected around one area of digging mid-morning on Wednesday.
According to the press, so far various animal bones have been dug up, but that appears to be the only ‘news’.
PJ police accompanying the Met are said to be “without expectations” that a body will be found.
Thus the village’s silent query “why now?” hangs steaming in the early summer heat.
By NATASHA DONN
news@algarveresident.com
