VICTOR TAPIADOR DISAPPEARED ARANJUEZ | Social integrator, lover of paddle tennis: Víctor, the young man who disappeared in Aranjuez, before a solidarity tournament

He finalized the details of a charity championship of the San Juan de Dios Hospital | The last image we have of him is at midnight, near the slopes where the event was to be held.

“Now I’m going up, I’m having coffee.” Are the five in the afternoon of Wednesday, March 8, 2023. Víctor writes a WhatsApp message to his mother, who has just called him. He is in a coffee shop with a friend, close to home, in Aranjuez (Madrid). “I have to go, I’ve told my mother that I’m coming”. They leave the cafeteria. The talk goes on a little longer. Hours before, Víctor has been eating at his sister’s house. I was like always. He spoke, above all, of a charity tournament that he was organizing. Everything is normal.

“At half past seven I send him a WhatsApp with a question, as if to say… you went up home, but you haven’t gone up. And I asked him: where are you?”, says his mother, Belén. Victor didn’t answer. He hasn’t done it again. He disappeared that March 8, in Aranjuez.

About two months after his disappearance, Belén draws strength from where there is none and reconstructs, together with CASO ABIERTO, the Iberian Press Events and Investigation portal, the last steps of her son: “a camera records him at 11:00 p.m.: 45 hours”. He has been struggling ever since to find it. “After that image, there is no more.”

Is called Víctor Tapiador Martín, is 25 years old and is a social integrator at the San Juan de Dios Hospital in Ciempozuelos (Madrid). She disappeared, without explanation, on March 8. The days go by, it’s almost two months now, and the answers don’t come. Those prior to her disappearance “was normal.” Padel lover and passionate about his work, he brought together his two illusions: “he had gotten the clues for free, and was organizing a charity tournament for the following weekend, which was holidays. The money he took out was for the hospital”, says his mother. His last calls, analyzed after disappearing, revolve in this line: reservation of slopes, supplies, prizes… “No one in his environment, neither family nor friends, we understand what could have happened.”

Belén goes back to that afternoon, March 8, the last time they had contact with him. At five, with that “now I’ll go up”, he stopped answering. “I called him around seven,” explains his mother. Victor’s phone was giving a signal, but he did not answer. “At 8:20 p.m., I insisted.” He gave off. “I thought she had run out of battery…”. The last WhatsApp that he writes to her is at 9:30 p.m., “I put: answer me at least so that I stay calm.” Just a check on the screen. “That message no longer read it.”

He didn’t go home to sleep

“It was all strange. He’s not one to do those things. If he sleeps over at a friend’s house who lives alone, or goes out, he always writes; if his phone goes off and he’s not coming, he calls me with another phone…”.Victor’s silence was not normal. “When we got up and saw that he was not there, that he had not come to sleep, things did not add up to us,” says Belén. Nerves and chaos set in.

“I work in a school, at recess I came home to see if he was there,” recalls Belén. “Nothing… I came back and, when I left school, I went with my sister to look for her car all over Aranjuez. We spent about an hour and a half…”. Without a trace. There was no more margin, they went to denounce: Victor Tapiador Martin. 25 year old young man. Since yesterday he is not here.

The family was divided: “while my husband and I went to file the complaint, my sister told me: I’m going to see the paddle tennis courts, it won’t be… And just, when I was going down there, in the polygon, saw Víctor’s car at the door of a supermarket”. The young man was not there. Neither in the area nor in the hypermarket. “As soon as we filed the complaint, we went there.”

His jacket, his keys, but he doesn’t

His car was there, but there was no sign of him. “We searched all around,” recalls Belén. The police showed up. “In the area there are several hypermarkets (Aldi, Lidl, Día) and paddle tennis courts. It is on the outskirts, but not far from Aranjuez. From home… it is about half a kilometer away,” Belén locates.

That it was close to the slopes made sense. Happiness ran out soon. There was no trace of him. The images from the cameras of one of the supermarkets were reviewed. “Víctor is seen leaving the car at a quarter to twelve at night, on that day 8. He gets out of the vehicle and crosses the road to a roundabout, and we have not heard anything again. It is the last image what do you have of him”.

Helicopters, drones and even a zodiac from firefighters in a nearby lagoon churned the following days. Nothing was found.

Inside the car, the jacket, the house keys. “At that time, at that time, it was cold, the jacket was not taken away.” He did carry documentation and telephone with him. The signal from his cell phone is lost at dawn, around three, in the same area where he was last seen.

Helicopters, drones and even a zodiac from the firefighters in a nearby lagoon, beat the following days. “The police acted immediately,” Belén thanks, “but nothing has been found.” The dissemination of Víctor’s image, his appearance in the media, have not yielded any clues either. No one has seen him or can help the family. “We don’t know what happens between five in the afternoon (when he writes to his mother) and the time he parks the car.” Nor do they visualize what could happen next.

All open hypotheses

“At home it was fine, we had no problems. In fact, it had been two weekends since we had gone to the beach together, in Alicante.” Questioning his surroundings, both the police and the family, His friends have declared that they are unaware of any conflict that Víctor might have. There are no new friends, relationships, nor had he spoken or shown any intention of wanting to disappear. “It is a constant uncertainty… Not knowing, not knowing…”.

The National Police keeps all the hypotheses open. His family is considering endless possibilities too. “Sometimes you think about certain things, other times you think about others… The day is very long, the head is very bad…“, laments Belén, who tries, without success, to complete the steps that her son took when he got out of the car. “No, we did not notice anything different in him.”

Víctor, always smiling, supportive, fun. He started working at the hospital at the age of 17 as a Nursing Assistant; he wanted more and, while working, he earned his integrator’s degree. His perfect plans: paddle tennis, running (he left it, but had resumed it), mountain routes, walks through the Madrid mountains and, above all, going out with his friends, the usual ones, a group made up of almost twenty young people from Aranjuez. Everyone beats, they search. They need answers, they need to know.

“The last call he makes the day he disappears lasts about three quarters of an hour, and it’s with the hospital coordinator, to finalize everything about the championship.” I had been searching the Internet for blades to buy and give as prizes to the champions. “There is nothing that is telling us that he had any problem leaving voluntarily…”. The charity tournament is also waiting for his return, it was not held.