Balance Interior searches for 5,000 disappeared, more than a thousand of them minors under guardianship
Newspaper library More than 4,200 unsolved disappearances since 2010
There are few cases as intriguing as that of the brothers
Isidre and Dolors
, who were 5 and 17 years old when they disappeared from a hospital room in the early morning
of September 5, 1988
.
The
Sant Joan de Dèu
health center
in
Manresa (Barcelona)
was expanded in 2014 and a huge orange sign today presides over the new part. The sister of the absent,
Mari Carmen Orrit Pires
, turns to the right and points to the three old buildings that made up the complex at the time, still in operation. "They were in the center, on the second floor, in room 229," he says. He is wearing a white T-shirt with the images of Isidre and Dolors on the front and the legend "disappeared never forgotten" on the back.
On the day of our meeting, the last judicial setback is still very recent.
Iciar Iriondo
, the family lawyer, had tried to reopen the case alleging the appearance of a witness, but only a few hours ago the Manresa court communicated the rejection of the petition, noting that the matter was considered prescribed in 2016.
This alleged witness came to light last January.
The
Telecinco
program
Viva la vida
dedicated a space to the case and the man called the newsroom.
Mari Carmen is in contact with him by whatsapp.
"I already told what I knew, I do not want problems with the judge or with the
Police,
" he says in the last message, in which he leaves the door open to a meeting with her.
The informant, 46 years old today, was 13 years old on the day of the disappearance and was in the hospital, says Mari Carmen, taking care of a sick brother, just as Dolors did with little Isidre.
He was on his way to the smoking room to get a cigarette when he heard screams and as he approached he saw a person in a doctor's outfit carrying the Orrit brothers away in a wheelchair.
He followed them into the basement, where another man in a toilet was waiting.
The brothers were injected with something - always according to what Mari Carmen transmits from her story - and covered them with white sheets.
There were other bodies covered with green sheets.
The boy was scared and ran out of the hospital in search of his mother, leaving his brother there alone.
Isidre and Dolors -marked with a red dot- in a family photo
"The family decided that he should not say anything because they were afraid, because, as they were doctors, in case he did something to them too. Now he is 46 years old, he is a father and he wanted to tell us about it so that we could rest," says Mari Carmen.
She gives truth to the story, among other things because the alleged witness says that there was a swimming pool in the basement.
"Before it was a tuberculosis hospital and there were pools for treatments and he didn't have to know that," he says.
The testimony has not been heard in court.
All the families of the disappeared live with the torment of a shared uncertainty: What happened to them?
And in their desperation to answer that question, they listen to whatever theory is put to them, however bizarre it may seem.
They are easy prey for unscrupulous psychics and detectives.
-It's hard to believe that all this was happening in the basement of the hospital and no one discovered it and reported it ... -We questioned the thesis.
-It is also hard to believe that you have just given birth, they tell you that your child is dead, they show you one from the freezer, they tell you to sign a death certificate and that you are signing an adoption certificate.
I know of such a case.
It is hard to believe but these things happen - he responds in reference to the plot of the stolen babies.
According to the summary of the case, at 5:10 p.m. on September 2, 1988, the boy Isidre Pires Orrit, aged 5, entered the emergency room at the Sant Joan de Dèu hospital in Manresa.
He was diagnosed with
aphthous stomatitis
- a disease that causes small ulcers to appear in the mouth - and it was ordered that he be admitted.
His older sisters took turns accompanying him to the hospital. On the third night, it was the turn of Dolors, 17, who was attributed by some media at the time "mental retardation." It was not true. The young woman had a serious visual defect that made it difficult for her to learn at the same pace as her age and that accentuated her already very introverted character.
Dolors was the sixth of the 15 children that
Alfredo Pires and María Orrit had
, a marriage as prolific as it was humble. He worked in a carpentry in Manresa and she took care of the offspring that grew practically at the rate of one baby per year. The first-born,
Angelina
-María had her before she met Alfredo-, followed by
María Rosa
(born in 1966),
Alfred
(1967), Mari Carmen (our interlocutor, 1968),
Engracia
(1970), the late Dolors and her twin
Manel
(1971),
Jordi
(1972),
Isabel
(1973),
Montserrat
(1974),
Yolanda
(1975),
Marta
(1976),
Daniel
(1977),
Teresa
(1978) and finally, Isidre, the other disappeared, born on November 20, 1983.
Some of little Isidre's toys.
If you look at the search signs you will see that Dolors is called Orrit Pires while Isidre is Pires Orrit.
The dance of names is due to the fact that the father, Alfredo, was born in
Portugal
and although he arrived in
Catalonia
with just over one year of age, he never obtained Spanish nationality.
"By Portuguese law, you had to put the mother's last name first, and this was done with the first 10 children. The last ones have already been allowed to put them on well," clarifies Mari Carmen the mismatch of surnames.
Of the 15 Orrit Pires / Pires Orrit siblings, 10 remain. The first-born,
Angelina
, died 17 years ago from cancer, and
Montserrat
, at three months from a virus. More tragic was the loss of
Manel
, the twin of Dolors, who, seven years after the disappearance of his brothers, was run over by a train.
I was 24 years old.
Mari Carmen, after finding a letter from the deceased, shuffles that it could be a suicide, since Manel, he explains, felt pointed out and pressured by those who believed that he should know something because he was Dolors' twin.
"I give my word of honor that when my brothers Dolores and Isidro come out, I will take revenge on all the people who have turned against me and accused me of the disappearance of my brothers. This is not a threat, just a clarification Of course, what I'm going through is not known to anyone but me, "he said in the letter.
"I think someone from the hospital took them because they wanted to adopt the child," says the sister.
His death and that of the other brothers were very painful, says Mari Carmen, but the two absences are even more so.
"As my mother says, at least Angelina, Montserrat and Manel, no matter how hard it may be, we know where they are and we are going to bring them flowers. But not Isidre and Dolors," she says, mentioning the octogenarian
María Orrit
.
The mother continues to live in Manresa, but declines the invitation to participate in this report.
On September 5, 1988, he was 47 years old and had been widowed for less than two months.
He was not accompanying Isidre to the hospital because when cancer took the patriarch he had to start cleaning houses.
She was giving the children breakfast before going to work - it would be around eight thirty in the morning - when they knocked on the door.
The Police asked about their children.
-Here they are, answered Maria.
-No, no, his children from the hospital.
-Well, in the hospital, where are they going to be?
The last person who saw them was the nurse who the night before, starting her shift at 11:00 pm, made a tour of the rooms.
When he returned at 07.00 the next day for the first round, Isidre and Dolors were gone.
Mari Carmen fights to keep looking for her brothers.
They were searched without success in the medical center, in the surroundings, in the nearby forests ... An example of the few clues that the investigators had about what happened to Isidre and Dolors is the range of hypotheses with which the Mossos d'Esquadra were working according to a report dated two months after the disappearance. If they were alive, they pointed out, they could be hidden or helped by third parties, kidnapped for sexual purposes or to give them adoption or have fled. If they were dead, they could have fallen down a ravine outside the hospital, had their bodies run over and hidden, killed after being sexually assaulted or by organ trafficking, or committed suicide due to family problems.
On July 11, 1989, a year later, the case was provisionally dismissed. "From all the actions it can be inferred that the investigated facts constitute a criminal offense, although there are no sufficient logical reasons to attribute their perpetration to a specific person," the judicial order reads.
"What do I think happened to them? I think someone from the hospital took them because they wanted to adopt the child, knowing that my mother had just become a widow and that she had many children," muses Mari Carmen. "Why do I think that? I don't understand that a child was admitted for sores in his mouth. To give him stale food [crushed] and put iodine with sticks in his mouth, we could do it at home. Then, when they admit him, they put him on with a child who had a broken arm, and on the third day, just the day of the disappearance, they changed him to a single room. Why? And that night, the nurses, as we have all done in our work at some time, brought little cakes because it was the birthday or the saint of one and they went to the waiting room to do a pica pica. I think someone knew and took advantage of the moment,that is why I think it was someone from within ", he concludes his conclusions.
Recently disappeared Isidre and Dolors, María Orrit, the mother, asked for a loan of 50,000 pesetas to hire a detective who took the pasta and, like the children, evaporated. Later, another private investigator would enter the case who always pointed to the paternal family, the relatives of the late Alfredo. He relied on the testimony of a hospital waitress, who, six years later, claimed to have overheard a suspicious conversation in the cafeteria. A man saying that the children were not well cared for, that the father had just passed away and that it would be best for them to be taken away.
Mari Carmen Orrit does not give fuel to this hypothesis.
He explains that both his paternal grandmother and his father's two brothers have always resided in Catalonia and have never been seen with the children.
"I don't find any sense in it. Do you risk stealing the children and taking them to give them to other people, because they haven't been with them?"
"I hope to see them again, even if they are doing their lives and do not want to know about me"
The sister was 19 when Isidre and Dolors disappeared.
Today, at 53, she is already the grandmother of a 16-year-old teenager,
Gorka
.
He has recently given the toys that his brother Isidre gave him on November 15, 1987, ten months before he disappeared, according to what is written on the Ricola candy box in which he gave them.
Mari Carmen was pregnant then and the child wanted them to be for the baby.
She has skipped a generation and passed them on to her grandson.
They are two warriors and a plastic horse barely four centimeters tall.
"The neighbors gave us toys for Reyes that they didn't want," he says.
"My illusion is to think that Isidre and Dolors are alive and find them, that one day they can tell us what happened to them. I hope to see them again, even if they are living their lives and do not want to know about us; to know something even if they have died of something else in these years, "he says by way of an epilogue.
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