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Elvira and her brothers, Ricard and Ramón, were left at a train station in Barcelona aged two, four and five. As an adult, when Elvira decided to look for her parents, she discovered a family history wilder than anything she had imagined.
On 22 April 1984, a sandy-haired, ringleted two-year-old girl named Elvira was driven with her brothers, Ricard and Ramón, aged four and five, to a grand railway terminus in Barcelona. The children, dressed in designer clothes, rode in a white Mercedes-Benz driven by their father’s French friend Denis. He parked near the modernist Estación de Francia and walked them into the hangar-like hall, which had shiny, patterned marble floors and was topped by two glass domes. Once there, he told the children to wait while he bought sweets.
The three siblings waited, but Denis did not return. Eventually, Elvira started crying. A railway worker asked what was wrong and Ramón, who spoke French and Spanish, explained. The police were called, but when they asked the children their parents’ names, they did not know. Nor could the children give their own surnames, or say where they lived – except that, until recently, it had been Paris.
Five-year-olds usually know such basic things, but the police were not overly concerned. Children are not generally abandoned without explanation, especially in groups of three. Authorities expected that very soon, someone – a relative, friend or schoolteacher – would report them missing and the mystery would be solved. They made no attempt to alert the press or appeal to the public for help.
That evening, police took them to an orphanage in Barcelona. Three days later, they were moved to a care home for vulnerable children in the centre of the city. The mid-1980s was an age of faxes, telegrams and hand-delivered mail, so international communication was slow, but police in France and across Europe were now informed of the three missing children in Barcelona.
Days turned into weeks, but no one came looking. Care home staff noticed that when the conversation turned to their parents or the past, the well-behaved children either had nothing to say or walked away. According to one of their reports, staff decided not to push back against what they saw as “a psychological block”.
A few weeks later, in May, an educational psychologist named Marisa Manera saw a photograph of Elvira and her brothers pinned to a board in a district office of Barcelona’s social services. “We are seeking information on these three children,” read an accompanying note. A business card with the care home’s number was pinned to it. Marisa and her husband, a teacher named Lluís Moral, had fostered children before, and they offered the three siblings a temporary home. The children moved in at the end of June.
Long worthy, read on :
Three abandoned children, two missing parents and a 40-year mystery
On 22 April 1984, a sandy-haired, ringleted two-year-old girl named Elvira was driven with her brothers, Ricard and Ramón, aged four and five, to a grand railway terminus in Barcelona. The children, dressed in designer clothes, rode in a white Mercedes-Benz driven by their father’s French friend Denis. He parked near the modernist Estación de Francia and walked them into the hangar-like hall, which had shiny, patterned marble floors and was topped by two glass domes. Once there, he told the children to wait while he bought sweets.
The three siblings waited, but Denis did not return. Eventually, Elvira started crying. A railway worker asked what was wrong and Ramón, who spoke French and Spanish, explained. The police were called, but when they asked the children their parents’ names, they did not know. Nor could the children give their own surnames, or say where they lived – except that, until recently, it had been Paris.
Five-year-olds usually know such basic things, but the police were not overly concerned. Children are not generally abandoned without explanation, especially in groups of three. Authorities expected that very soon, someone – a relative, friend or schoolteacher – would report them missing and the mystery would be solved. They made no attempt to alert the press or appeal to the public for help.
That evening, police took them to an orphanage in Barcelona. Three days later, they were moved to a care home for vulnerable children in the centre of the city. The mid-1980s was an age of faxes, telegrams and hand-delivered mail, so international communication was slow, but police in France and across Europe were now informed of the three missing children in Barcelona.
Days turned into weeks, but no one came looking. Care home staff noticed that when the conversation turned to their parents or the past, the well-behaved children either had nothing to say or walked away. According to one of their reports, staff decided not to push back against what they saw as “a psychological block”.
A few weeks later, in May, an educational psychologist named Marisa Manera saw a photograph of Elvira and her brothers pinned to a board in a district office of Barcelona’s social services. “We are seeking information on these three children,” read an accompanying note. A business card with the care home’s number was pinned to it. Marisa and her husband, a teacher named Lluís Moral, had fostered children before, and they offered the three siblings a temporary home. The children moved in at the end of June.
Long worthy, read on :
Three abandoned children, two missing parents and a 40-year mystery
