For us journalists who followed the case day by day, without fabulations of creative memory and with the evidence of the newspaper archive, the kidnapping of the Olot pharmacist became another kidnapping.
Understand, and with the victim’s forgiveness, in practice we did nothing else for almost two years than dedicate ourselves to this fascinating story. First, during the search for Maria Àngels Feliu, and then, with the investigation into the captors.
The undersigned and his alter ego Domingo Marchena in the events and courts of that time in La Vanguardia (the order of the names does not alter the product) were on the front line since November 20, 1992 when the incident occurred. Or rather, since the day after it was confirmed, a Saturday afternoon. The Girona correspondent, Antoni F. Sandoval, recorded what happened.
Looking in the rearview mirror, neither Domingo nor this reporter imagined how that news would affect them.
It became an obsession. There wasn’t a day when there wasn’t some thread to pull. There was a lot of speculation, whether it was ETA, whether it was the Sicilians of the ‘Ndrangheta, whether it was revenge against the businessman father, in short, anyone who moved on the scene seemed suspicious.
There were a couple of detainees, some smart ones who tried to get a cut, movie characters, a pizzeria where they could have cooked the body and even a rogatory commission to Albacete to, supposedly, unearth the body of the disappeared woman.
In the garden that the agents searched with pick and shovel there was a skeleton, yes, but of a donkey. In the literal sense. This led to the moment when a Banyoles judge issued an order in which he quite clearly declared the pharmacist dead.
Months passed, normality was established, except for those of us who continued to think about the matter. Who was behind it? There was something in the atmosphere that could manifest at any moment.
On Saturday, March 26, 1994, this chronicler went to a wedding 225 kilometers from Barcelona. Having just gotten into bed, at dawn on the 27th, the landline phone rang (there were no cell phones) in that house.
–Siscu, the pharmacist has turned up alive, at a gas station.
–Domingo, how can you call me at this hour to play this joke on me?
–Do you think I would do something like that?
At 8:25 a.m. on that holiday we found ourselves in front of the revolving door of La Vanguardia, on Pelai Street. Feliu had risen.
