Alejandro Navarro -Alex to those who knew him- went missing in Ronda (Málaga) in early May 2024. Two years and four months after his disappearance, the poster with his name, photo, and description remains active on the ‘SOS Desaparecidos’ website, his biological mother is still worried about her son’s whereabouts – who would have turned 27 today – and the National Police have not stopped searching for him since then.
This week, to the surprise of many, the investigation has taken an unexpected turn and everything points to his case, surrounded by unknowns until now, being very close to being solved.
The people responsible for clarifying the disappearance have considered different hypotheses during this time and have kept various lines of work open, among them gaining strength is the idea that the boy had not left voluntarily and may already be dead.
From the beginning, they have also focused on some people from his closest circle, whom they suspected might know more than they claimed.
In the early hours of September 16, the police arrived with a small excavator in the backyard of the house on Jimera de Líbar street, in Ronda, where the young man lived at the time of his disappearance and detained four people – two men and two women – who happen to be the brother and sister of Alex’s mother’s boyfriend and their respective partners.
To complicate matters further, it should be noted that among those arrested is the couple in whose house the missing young man lived. They were not blood relatives, but they maintained a very close relationship and he referred to them as ‘uncles’. It was the woman who reported his disappearance two days after seeing him for the last time.
The fact that one of the detained couples had carried out works in the backyard of the house shortly after Alex disappeared, supposedly to bury a dog, put them on the authorities’ radar and was decisive regarding the search with heavy machinery.
Alex had certain disagreements with his biological mother and moved to a room at the back of the ground floor occupied by those he considered his uncles.
Although he had chosen not to share a flat with his mother, the relationship with her was cordial and he continued to keep in touch with the woman, who lived on the first floor of the same building as her son and her boyfriend’s family.
On May 3, and always according to the version of one of the detainees, the woman in whose property Alex was staying, the young man left the house wearing only what he had on. He did not take luggage, money, or documentation. Nor his mobile phone.
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That day Alex did not return to sleep and neither did he the next day. It was then, on May 5, when the now-arrested woman – apparently advised by some friends – decided to file the missing person report.
At first, she told the officers that Alex, who sometimes worked picking olives, had gone to the field where he planned to do some errands. A destination he never reached and errands that were never done.
She also told them that the young man planned to collect payment for some work he had done at the end of April and that he had been owed, thus opening the possibility that his departure could be related to the collection of the debt.
A voluntary departure?
The last time someone reportedly saw Alex alive was precisely the day his absence was reported. Family members told investigators that they had seen him walking down a central street in the old town of Ronda, but this detail was never clear and the reality is that to this day it is not known for sure who, when, and where saw the young man alive for the last time.
All these details – leaving without his basic belongings and without an apparent reason, the lack of news for years, or the versions difficult to verify about where or with whom he might have been – have made investigators suspect almost from the beginning that Alex’s departure was not voluntary.
The young man’s relatives, who describe him as a very cheerful person and a “go-getter”, have always maintained that he did not leave on his own initiative.
Coordinated from the General Directorate of Police (DGP) and with the participation of agents from the Provincial Police Station of Málaga and also from the city of Ronda itself, in March an operation was deployed in the city of the Tajo to review several sites near the municipality’s Recycling Center, the Dehesa neighborhood, and a pine forest near the area.
They were looking for biological remains of Alex or clues that would give them some hint of where they could find him.