The woman with no name
No one has ever claimed the body of a young woman found hanged in Portbou in 1990
Catalan police alone still have 74 unidentified bodies found all over Catalonia
Portbou, September 4, 1990. Early morning. The body of a young woman in a white dress is found hanging from a tree near the cemetery. A woman passing by was the first to come across the disturbing scene. The young woman had not been dead for long, and so the investigation began, confident that the mystery would soon be solved. Her sandals were carefully placed nearby, suggesting suicide, while no signs of violence suggested it was not the result of a criminal act.
Twenty-five years later, we still do not know who the dead woman in white was. Her body has been preserved, which means her DNA can still be tested, a technique not used in 1990, in the hope that someone will still yet claim the body buried in Figueres cemetery.
Gone but not forgotten
No personal objects were found at the scene. Nor was anything useful gleaned in the local area. Just a few potential witnesses claimed they had seen a woman who could have been the victim wandering around the port. Nor did distributing the woman's photograph, with an international
police appeal for information, produce any clues: “Now things have changed and through the internet and social networks another attempt to get information could be tried,” says Gómez Varela, who is still willing to help with the case. Bardalet shows the same willingness: “I still think that somewhere, near or far, there is a family suffering because they do not where this girl is,” he says.
DNA testing may help. Yet, in 1990 that was not possible, and nor was it in 1994 when forest rangers near the Sant Climent military base found the strangled corpse of a boy who became another NN. Yet even DNA testing cannot identify all the NNs that remain unidentified, even with the existing network of interconnected databases available to police.
Today, the Mossos d'Esquadra alone have 74 unidentified dead bodies found in different places in Catalonia. Among them are five victims of a lorry accident in Capmany in 1997, a man and a woman murdered in 2000 on the path to the Santa Llúcia hermitage in Jonquera, a 70-year old man with 3,000 euros on him found dead in Roses marina in 2009. These cases, along with many others, for the moment remain a mystery.