The Interior Ministry is finalising the implementation of the 2nd Strategic Plan on Missing Persons, with a single protocol for coordination between Security Forces and new measures for the investigation of long-term disappearances.
Meeting of the Monitoring Commission for the 1st Strategic Plan on Missing PersonsThe Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, chairs the fourth meeting of the Monitoring Commission for the 1st Strategic Plan on Missing Persons.
TDB keeps you informed. Follow us on: Facebook, Twitter and Instagram
The security forces investigated the disappearance of 16,147 people in 2024 and cleared up 72 per cent of the cases in less than a week
The Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, has chaired the fourth meeting of the Monitoring Commission of the 1st Strategic Plan on Missing Persons (2022-2024) and has held a meeting with representatives of the families, associations and foundations of the sector.
The State Security Forces and Corps investigated 16,147 disappearances in Spain last year, according to data from the latest annual report of the National Centre for Missing Persons (CNDES). The figure represents an increase of 6 per cent compared to 2023.
Officers registered 26,345 reports in 2024, of which 11,552 correspond to citizens with a single episode of disappearance and the rest to repeat offenders, with an average of 3.2 reports per person. This repetition rate is higher among adolescents.
50.6 per cent of the missing persons are adults and 49.4 per cent are minors. Two out of three of those affected are Spanish men and 91 per cent of the cases are classified as voluntary absences, according to the CNDES report published on Monday.
‘Thanks to the work of the National Centre for Missing Persons and the State Security Forces and Corps, 95.5 per cent of the complaints have been resolved,’ said Grande-Marlaska in his speech. ‘More than 72 per cent of them were solved in less than a week, which shows the effort made in the investigations.
‘Only 1.4 per cent of the reported disappearances ended in death, and of these, half of the cases correspond to accidental deaths,’ said Pilar Muniesa, director of the CNDES.
New official posters
The Minister of the Interior highlighted the progress made during the term of the 1st Strategic Plan on Missing Persons, which ‘has made Spain an international benchmark in the sector’, and announced a series of new measures to continue improving the search system and attention to families.
Grande-Marlaska has presented the new official missing persons posters. The designs offer more information, larger photographs and additional protective measures for the image of those affected. ‘We want to help in the location of missing persons, but also, with the same intensity, respect their dignity,’ said the minister.
The new posters incorporate a QR code with additional information about the cases and are an essential tool in the fight against misinformation in a particularly sensitive area. That is, the official posters are authorised by the agents involved in the investigation and agreed by the families of the missing persons.
In addition, the CNDES will reduce the digital footprint of the images of those affected. The official posters will disappear in less than 12 hours after the clarification of the cases, instead of the current 48 hours. In this way, the centre aims to prevent the uncontrolled dissemination on networks and platforms of the image of a person whose whereabouts have been solved.
‘We consider it necessary for public exposure to be the minimum necessary and that is why the digital footprint will be erased in just half a day,’ insisted Minister Grande-Marlaska. ‘We are going to prevent the image of a missing person from circulating without the authorisation of their families or remaining on digital platforms when they have been clarified’, he added.