Unexplained

After the crash, no trace of him was foundé

It was a dangerous, winding mountain pass north of Madrid – but the truck was speeding along at 100mph. Other drivers tried to veer out of its way, assuming its brakes had gone.

And Andres Martinez, who was steering the speeding truck, did his best to avoid them, too.

Only, Andres hit another truck and overturned.

And the 20,000 litres of sulphuric acid he’d been carrying from the Spanish port of Cartagena to Bilbao spilled onto the road.

When the emergency services arrived, they managed to clear up the acid. And from the cabin of the truck, they pulled the bodies of Andres Martinez and his wife Carmen.

But where was their little boy?

Andres was a longdistance truck driver. It wasn’t unusual for him to haul dangerous chemicals. But this trip was different. The route from Cartagena to Bilbao would take him through the beautiful Somosierra mountains.

As the school holidays had just started, Andres had decided to take his wife Carmen and their son Juan-pedro, 10.

‘Juan-pedro loved his father so much,’ his aunt Lucia later told Press. ‘He couldn’t bear it when his dad was off on a journey for a week. Juan was excited about going.’

On that fateful day, 24 June 1986, the family was halfway through the drive. Earlier, at 5.30am, they’d had breakfast at a cafe in Cabanillas.

The waiter remembered Juan-pedro had asked for cake. Less than 30 minutes later, Andres’ truck crashed – with no trace of JuanPedro found.

The truck was lifted with a crane, in case the boy had fallen out during the impact.

And military police combed the area. Perhaps Juan-pedro had survived, run off terrified? Nothing. Perhaps his remains had dissolved in the sulphuric acid?

But scientists said a body would need to be fully submerged in acid to dissolve.

Even then, it would take 24 hours before the soft tissue started to disintegrate, and five days before the acid would eat bones. So where was Juan-pedro? Experts examined Andres’ truck. The brakes had been in perfect working order. Why had he been speeding? Was he fleeing something…or someone?

Andres’ driving that morning seemed totally out of character. He had a good record.

The police questioned the driver of the truck into which Andres had crashed. He’d escaped with minor injuries.

After the crash, he said that a white van had pulled up. A man and woman with foreign accents got out, checked on him.

When they found he wasn’t seriously hurt, they’d gone over to Andres’ wrecked truck.

Then, dazed, the driver’s attention had wandered. Could the couple have found JuanPedro alive and taken him?

With nothing more than their foreign accents to go on, the police search for them hit a dead end.

The truck’s tachometer showed that, just before Andres began speeding down the mountain pass, he’d pulled over for just 20 seconds.

Could those 20 seconds hold the key to the mystery?

Some investigators speculated Andres might have killed his son in that time, and thrown him from the steep mountain pass.

And that, back in the truck cabin, Carmen had attacked her husband – forcing him to lose control of the truck and speed down the steep road.

But, if this was the case, then why wasn’t the body of the little boy ever found in the Somosierra mountains?

And it seemed Andres was a

20,000 litres of sulphuric acid spilled onto the road

loving father, had appeared happy at breakfast. There were other theories… Was Andres mixed up with drug trafficking? Had a cartel taken his son as leverage?

Then there were the two shepherds who’d witnessed the accident.

They’d seen a white van stop at the site, too, and a man and a woman – both tall, very blond, both in white coats – get out. Apparently, they’d taken something from the cabin of the truck.

Soon, speculation was rife. Maybe the couple in the white van weren’t foreign visitors, but aliens... Perhaps their accent wasn’t foreign, but extra-terrestrial...

Far-fetched, perhaps. But people are still puzzling over the missing boy.

In the 30 years since the crash, there have been reported sightings of Juan-pedro all over Spain – and around the world.

‘We still believe he’s alive,’ Juan-pedro’s aunt Lucia told the Press this year.

Perhaps Juan-pedro is still alive – without any evidence, it’s as possible as any other explanation…

They’d seen a man and woman, tall, blond, in white coats