Her friends were immediately clear that Matilde Muñoz, the Galician tourist disappeared in Indonesia, had not vanished by her own will. There was no option, they said, that suddenly, without having warned, he did not write on his social networks and did not respond to the messages. Although it was globetrotters, I had built a solid network of traveled friends with which it remained in contact and with those that remained, through different countries of Asia, as they could. They and their nephew investigated and pressed to look for Deadas they called it, in the Sanggigi area, on the island of Lombok, where it was last seen. On Saturday, when almost two months ago of his disappearance, and after hard reproaches and criticism of the Spanish authorities, close to the hotel in which he stayed. As they suspected her loved ones, she was killed inside her room to steal her.
“We have made researchers, we have turned our brains. And what have they done?” Asks Ana Jorba, one of Matilde’s friends who gave the alarm, in a brief on his Facebook wall. Among all, they began to review their steps through Asia and came to the conclusion that it no longer leaves alive from the hotel where it was staying, Bumi Aditya, on July 1, when it no longer responds to anyone. “Our theory is that something happens at the hotel,” Olga Marín, from Matilde’s traveling family, told this newspaper, when they had not yet found the body. She put the first complaint for her in the police station of Sant Feliu de Guíxols (Girona) of the Mossos d’Esquadra.
In Indonesia, the investigation formally started on August 13, after a written request from the Embassy of Spain in the country. The first steps of the police on the island pointed out that Matilde had not left Indonesia. Nothing that surprised the group of friends, who on his own had gone much further. They suspected the hotel, after a worker showed them a photo of a message sent from Matilde’s phone number where he said he had gone to Laos. It was from July 6, when he no longer answered any of her friends. “Was he going to write to her and not us?” They wondered then Olga. And on top of that he was plagued with spelling faults, which Matilde did not commit when he wrote in English. All they asked for, insisted, is that some Spanish authority moved to Lombok.
“For two whole months your family and your friends live between anguish and hope. Every day we woke up wishing that you appeared in some hidden beach of Lombok, with your quiet smile, your curious look and your backpack loaded with memories,” says Aarti Fernández, another of her friends who met her three years ago. Excited, it is hard for you to find the words to describe the impotence and frustration you feel. Because from the beginning, they insist, they knew that Matilde had not disappeared by his own will and that he could not be far from the hotel, in which he had already stayed on other occasions.
If the investigation of the Indonesian police barely advanced, a journalist displaced to Lombok, Joaquín Campos, took Mati’s traveling family the novelties of the case he discovered: his belongings found almost two months later in a landfill, a slope under the bed of his room … “Forget about waiting for you Email, to a call about some investigation … ”, follows Ana Jorba, in his complaint brief on Facebook about the information they obtained officially.
While her friends looked for and denounced her in Catalonia, Matilde’s nephew, son of the only brother who had left, Ignacio Vilariño, Henares (Madrid). None knew about the existence of the other, but with Matilde’s disappearance they joined, and made a common front to find her in Indonesia, according to Olga. They created WhatsApp groups, and from there they were managing, on the one hand, the news in their own research, and on the other, the treatment with the media.
The situation exploded on Friday night, when Matilde’s nephew sent a very critical message to the media, in which he demanded that the Ministry of Interior and Foreign Affairs mobilize the “necessary resources to find that wonderful person who surely rests near the hotel, in a lodazal, under stones or in a dump, without anyone moving a finger”. The man criticized the “ineffectiveness, neglect and bad praxis of the Spanish authorities”, including all the levels that “should give protection” to a citizen “with serious problems abroad, disappeared or killed.”
The next day, Saturday, August 30, practically two months after Matilde’s disappearance, his family and friends received the news they feared from the beginning: the Indonesian police had found Matilde’s body, on Alberto beach in the municipality of Singgigi, a little kilometer of the hotel where he stayed. Two men, 30 and 34 were arrested, accused of “premeditated homicide and robbery with violence.” Both confessed to having sneaked through the window of their room with the intention of stealing and having suffocated, according to a press release from the country’s police collected by Efe.
Asked about this newspaper, Matilde Sopesan’s friends if they take any measure against joint after they found it dead. “We are waiting for the autopsy,” says Olga Marín, who considers that the question that falls to his family. Aarti still tries to recover from the avalanche of information of the last hours. “Frustrating, outrageous, disappointing … This has been the entire management of the case of Matilde Muñoz sentence Ana Jorba, who considers that all the agencies involved in their search have acted” late and bad. “
Matilde, already retired flight hostess, with his residence in Mallorca, was always a “tireless traveler, a strong and bright woman,” Aarti describes her. I always carried a backpack, where in addition to books and maps, he kept “laughs that were infected, advice that always arrived at the right time.” And he says goodbye to it: “You showed us that traveling was not just traveling landscapes, but also discovering people, sharing moments, listening, learning and leaving traces in each place.”
