Thanks Pegasus. Which building is apartment block 'Pedras Brancas'?
Silence has returned to Praia da Luz
By Maria Mateus
15 September 2007
"People are saying they always walked hand in hand, and that he squeezed her hand when she talked too much". Inacio Salgadinho hands out the ticket that allows us to park within the parking lot that belongs to the village hall. He is 77, a man of few words but who doesn't excuse himself from answering the questions that, invariably, are asked by the people who leave their car there, in front of the beach: "Was the girl located? Was it the parents after all? Where is the Ocean Club apartment?"
Initially, he let the journalists park at no cost, but the space was quickly invaded by the media exclusively. "I started demanding the payment from everyone, because the village hall doesn't forgive me, I have to pay them at the end of each month!", he justifies.
The "problem" of journalists doesn't exist anymore. Now, very few are still around, and even these prefer to park around the church. In fact, if it weren't for the half dozen dishes on the satellite-cars and the cameras pointing at the church's main door, nobody would say that Praia da Luz, in the Algarve, had been the stage for the most mediatised police case there ever was in Portugal.
There are no longer photos of Madeleine in the shop windows, or yellow ribbons in the hair and around the wrists. And there are already people who fear the long-term consequences of the case, which the village will suffer: "With time, the English will stop coming here", Jorge Silva, a cook, foresees, and he explains: "We'll be remembered for a bad thing".
Business was good for some cafes and restaurants but nobody wants to admit a big increase in their income because of Maddie's case. Behind the counters, the reply is always the same: "High season here can be felt starting in early May" - precisely when the girl went missing.
Only at the bar of the local supermarket, the Baptista, Elsa Barros admits: "This year, we've had August twice". But she adds: "We usually sell well all year round".
Silence has returned to the village. Because there are less tourists, and because Kate and Gerry don't drag onlookers and the media behind them anymore.
But there is still a restlessness that is no longer due to the sidewalks being crowded and to the noise that came from the generators of the journalists' machinery. The noise is present in the memory of those who live in Luz. "We have a bigger fear of people. We had never heard anything about missing children around here. After this case, we started to be afraid", Celia Rodrigues says, while she irons at the local laundry shop. "My son, who is 11, is still frightened when a stranger looks at him", she adds. And even at school, Silvia Silva continues, "if someone stops and looks into the playground area - it's complicated! We suspect everything and everyone".
Silvia lives at the apartment block 'Pedras Brancas', which was inspected by the Policia Judiciaria (PJ). On the days right after the disappearance of Madeleine, a muffled cry that came from that location raised suspicions.
"On Saturday, around half past midnight, two inspectors from the Judiciaria asked to enter my home. My daughter was four months old back then. They looked at her often, they walked around the bathroom, the kitchen, they even peeked into the laundry basket", she recalls. The reports follow one another on the same subject, because on that night the PJ visited other homes, leaving the inhabitants restless and disturbed. "We didn't want to risk someone watching us talking to the PJ, like it happened with Luis, Robert Murat's friend. After the police talked to him, he never got himself another pool to clean", Silvia remembers.
The truth is that the Madeleine case brought the world unique images from Praia da Luz. The sand beach, the cliffs, the sea, the meandering streets that lead down to the beach, the church that overlooks the ocean - images that introduced an Algarve where one feels like going to. But that is not what people talk about at Luz. There, everybody laments that "we are only known for something so bad".
