On a stop sign at the entrance to Praia Da Luz, faded graffiti declares: “STOP McCann circus.”
The stencilled message – now hastily sprayed over – was once daubed on every stop sign in the town as locals reeled from the devastating impact of the British toddler’s disappearance in 2007.
Tourism halved in the charming Algarve resort as the mystery of Madeleine McCannturned into a media storm which they have struggled to escape ever since, according to weary residents.
Now the ghost of Madeleine has returned 18 years later as German police mount fresh searches a mile away on top of dramatic volcanic cliffs overlooking the town.
Many locals have their own theories about that happened to the three-year-old, who vanished from a holiday apartment at Ocean Club resort while her parents had dinner nearby.
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And as a new three-day search led by German authorities appeared to wind down on Thursday, many expressed their frustration at “the case that won’t go away”.
British expat Julia Newbould, 79, has lived in the town for 40 years after emigrating from Sheffield.
“Everybody’s fed up with it – I have spoken to people of different ages and different nationalities, and everybody is feeling the same,” she told The Independent.
“It’s the case that won’t go away. It was terrible at first. People stopped coming and cancelled their holidays, it was devastating.
“It’s always been such a peaceful place. It impacted everyone a lot originally in the year it happened and then people were slow to come back.”
She isn’t surprised that the search teams, who have been using ground penetrating radar and a digger to scour derelict farm buildings near where suspect Christian Brueckner used to live, appear to have found little evidence connected to Madeleine’s disappearance after all this time.
“They won’t find anything because the ground is rock hard,” she said. “But they just keep bringing it up and bringing it up.”
She said locals were shocked that the McCann’s had left their young children unattended in a holiday apartment when they could have hired a babysitter for as little as 30 euros.
“The Portuguese couldn’t believe it,” she added. “They are very family oriented they just couldn’t believe that anybody would leave children of that age.”
Restaurant owner Mariana Baiao, 52, said the graffiti messages on stop signs started to appear as the impact of the case put people out of work.
“This area is very calm, it’s the kind of place where families come,” she said. “Normally we have a lot of tourism in winter and summer. In winter we have older people who come for a month or two to relax because it’s very quiet. In summertime we have lots of families coming.
“When that happened we lost 50 per cent of tourism – it was really bad. A lot of people lost work. I think Praia Da Luz at that time was really safe, but then this one thing happened.”
Although she’s also sceptical of the latest efforts will solve the mystery, she did note the search site matches a disturbing dream Kate McCann famously recanted to police, in which Madeleine was lost on a hill overlooking Praia Da Luz.
The mother was also known to jog up to the clifftop path to a viewpoint known as “Rocha Negra” or “Black rock”, which is just metres from the remote scrubland where police are now digging.
“I am a mother and I would like to know what’s really happened and see the end of this case,” Ms Baiao added.
Many of the defaced stop signs have since been replaced as the memory of the case begins to fade, but a handful remain, including one just down the road from the apartment where Madeleine was last seen alive.
Holidaymakers from across Europe were sunbathing by the pool inside the Ocean Club resort on Thursday, most blissfully unaware of the grim search efforts ongoing nearby.
After almost two decades of media scrutiny as her unsolved disappearance has continued to make worldwide headlines, staff at the whitewashed complex said they were unable to comment on the investigation.
Eric Hoffman, 78, told The Independent he had no idea he was staying at the infamous spot where Maddy vanished when he booked a two week holiday from Switzerland.
“We were surprised, we know of the case from the papers but we didn’t know before we booked that it was this building,” he said. Asked about the latest searches, he added: “It’s quite difficult now to find something because it’s been so long.”
Investigators appeared to pack up and leave without answers at the end of the three-day search on Thursday evening, with no obvious signs of any major discoveries.
Teams of German and Portuguese police officers were seen shaking hands and embracing following a debrief and started to pack up a tent at their base in the 120-acre search site in Atalaia, which was once home to farming community.
One team member was seeing carrying a crate of German beer.
Animal bones are reported to be among limited findings in the final hours of the search, local television station SIC reported. Other local media said some material had been gathered on Wednesday and sent for analysis to see if it contained anything relevant to the investigation.
But for the people living in the resort of Praia Da Luz, the sickening mystery of the disappearance of a three-year-old toddler continues.
