The Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, has announced an improvement in the information provided to the families of missing persons using an informative letter detailing the resources available to them, which will include free psychological care provided by professionals contracted by the ministry.

The Security Forces and Corps registered 2023 a total of 24,581 reports of disappearances corresponding to 15,126 different people, according to the balance sheet released on Tuesday by the Ministry of the Interior. The head of the department, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, has announced that the ministry will begin to provide free psychological care to the relatives of missing persons.

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The disappearance of 15,126 people in 2023

Grande-Marlaska presided over the annual meeting with families of missing persons, as well as with representatives of associations and foundations operating in the sector, held at the headquarters of the National Centre for Missing Persons, whose director, Pilar Minuesa, presented the main figures of its activity over the past year.

During 2023, the State Security Forces and Corps received 24,581 reports of missing persons, a decrease of 5.5 per cent from the 26,0031 cases reported the previous year. The 24,581 reports registered in 2023 correspond to 10,729 persons who were reported missing only once, while the absence of another 4,397 persons was reported twice or more times during the year (which translates into a recidivism rate of 56 per cent). The total number of missing persons in 2023 is therefore 15,126.

95.4 per cent of these reports (22,538) were resolved during the same year, which translates into 13,088 missing persons located. As of 31 December 2023, 1,955 reports filed that year remained active; since 2010, when the National Information System on Missing Persons and Unidentified Human Remains (PDyRH) came into operation, the number of active reports is 6,001.

The profile of the persons whose disappearance was reported at some point during 2023 is that of a male (61.5 per cent), of legal age (48.9 per cent of the reports correspond to minors between 13 and 17 years of age), of Spanish nationality (66.3 per cent, while the rest are distributed among 120 different nationalities).

Ninety-two per cent of the complaints investigated (21,690) are voluntary. A further 1,183 disappearances were involuntary and only 89 cases were found to be forced disappearances. Finally, 65.7 per cent of the missing persons were located within seven days of the alert, and in only 15.4 per cent of the cases was resolution delayed by 30 days or more. Less than 1 per cent of reports were closed with a fatal outcome.

Psychological support
“The State Security Forces and Corps will never cease in their efforts to locate and identify all the people who are listed as missing”, the Minister of the Interior assured the relatives and representatives of the associations and foundations that bring them together and who attended the annual meeting held this Tuesday at the CNDES headquarters.

Grande-Marlaska announced that the CNDES is working to improve communication between police investigation teams and the families of missing persons using an Information Letter that will be given to them at the time of the report, which will include detailed information on the different resources available to them and will provide them with a fluid and close channel of communication with the Security Forces.

In addition, the minister added, the centre is also preparing to hire psychologists specialised in assisting the families of missing persons. The ministry is already processing the financial dossier for their recruitment and, once completed, the CNDES will offer this service to all those relatives who voluntarily wish to receive free psychological intervention.

Tribute
The Ministry of the Interior took advantage of the meeting to pay tribute to the InterSOS association, created in 1998 and which ceased its activity last January. During the meeting, Grande-Marlaska presented an award to its founders, Luisa Vera and Juan Bergua (parents of Cristina, who disappeared on 9 March 1997), whose struggle to find the whereabouts of their daughter led Congress in 2010 to proclaim every 9 March as the “Day for people who have disappeared without apparent cause”.

InterSOS also played an important role in the birth of the CNDES in 2018, which manages the PDyRH, collects the various proposals from relatives of missing persons and promotes initiatives to improve the protocols for action in the field of disappearances.

During 2023, the CNDES has harmonised the two databases containing DNA information of relatives of missing persons, the PDyRH System and the Police Database of DNA-based Identifiers (INT-FENIX). In addition, the review of the fingerprints of long-term missing persons has made it possible to identify 294 corpses last year that were previously unidentified.

The CNDES has established itself as a national and international benchmark in the field of missing persons due to its activity in this area, its work in favour of cross-border cooperation between countries to promote the exchange of good practices and the multidisciplinary approach with which it tackles this phenomenon.

The Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, with the families of the missing personsThe Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, with the families of the missing persons.More information
Complete statistics included in the CNDES activity report for 2’023.