Five years after the disappearance of Julián Herrera and his daughter Clara, only two years ago, the mountain seemed to have definitively devoured them. The case had occupied holders for weeks in 2020, when both went up in flames during a short and apparently safe route in the French Pyrenees. With time, no clues and no signals, official searches came to a halt. The family, broken and tired, clings to the idea that perhaps they have decided to start a new life at all. Others, more realistic, thought of a tragic fall to some inaccessible point.
Nothing happened for years. Until the end of August, a pair of Catalan hikers decided to explore a little-trafficked area near La Brecha de Roland. Between the deep cracks that opened up in the rock, I thought I could see something that broke the gray uniformity of the place. As he squatted down, he illuminated the interior of the furniture and saw a rectangular shape covered with octopus and damp.
—It's… a backpack, —he murmured, without daring to touch it.
The woman approached. When he wiped what looked like a label with his fingers, they both looked at each other with a start.
—Julián Herrera.
Father and daughter disappeared in the Pyrenees: five years later, some hikers discovered what was hidden in a cave
The heart accelerated. That couldn't be a coincidence. The backpack was piled up between two rocks, as if it had fallen from an upper cliff. The couple took photos and sent them to the gendarmerie, who reacted immediately. Within a few hours a specialized rescue team arrived in a helicopter, arriving in the area.
Captain Morel, who had participated in the original search five years ago, opened the corresponding backpack. Inside he found a broken metal bottle, pocketed remains of food, a crumpled map… and something that made him bleed: Clara's blue libretto, recognized by everyone during the investigation.
