In 1991, Alto del Prado Public High School, located on the outskirts of Santander, was a school like any other: a gray building, tired teachers, and teenagers dreaming of leaving as soon as they could. Nothing suggested that this school year would be remembered forever in the town’s history. Until, within a few weeks, four girls from the same class—Nerea Salvatierra, Clara Busto, Marisa Ceballos, and Julia Arjona, all 16 years old—were discovered to be pregnant.
The news spread like wildfire. Families reacted with disbelief and shame, while teachers avoided making comments. The rumors were endless: that the girls had made a pact, that they shared the same father, that it was a joke gone too far. But nothing was as unsettling as what happened next. One April morning, Nerea didn’t show up to school. She didn’t return home either. Two days later, Clara disappeared. Then Marisa. Finally, Julia. One after another, without goodbyes, without notes, without signs of struggle. They simply… vanished.
The Civil Guard investigated thoroughly: interviews, searches in nearby forests, road checkpoints, interrogations of boyfriends, teachers, even the parents themselves. No leads. The regional press pushed with sensationalist headlines until the case was eventually shelved for lack of progress. The school lost students, the hallways fell silent, and the town sank into a mix of guilt and fear. Over the years, the memory of the four girls became almost taboo.
Thirty years later, in 2021, the school was still standing, though partially remodeled. The oldest janitor, Eusebio Santín, was one of the few who had worked there since the nineties. He was reserved, meticulous, and had a surprisingly sharp memory. One October morning, while checking a storage room that was soon to be demolished, he noticed that an old ventilation grate was loose. When he removed it, he found a hollow space behind the wall: narrow, deep, and covered in dust. Inside was a damp folder wrapped in school-style plastic from the nineties.
He brought it into the light and, upon opening it, froze. There were photographs of the four girls, some taken inside the school itself, others in an unknown location; drawings of floor plans; schedules; lists of names; and at the very end, a letter dated March 1991. The handwriting was shaky. The sender: Julia Arjona.
With cold hands and a racing pulse, Eusebio understood that this could not be ignored. He had protected a secret for too long, perhaps without knowing it. And now, for the first time in three decades, something had shifted.
“I have to show this to someone,” he murmured.
But first, he wanted to read the letter.
And what he found inside would forever change the official version of the story…
The letter was handwritten in faded blue ink. Some words had blurred from moisture, but the message was perfectly clear. Eusebio began reading as he sat on the bench in the hallway, as if he needed physical support to bear what he was about to discover.
“If someone finds this, please don’t judge us. We had no other choice.”
Julia began by explaining that she and her friends had not planned anything at first. Each girl was going through her own emotional struggles with the pregnancy: fear, shame, uncertainty. The strange part, she said, was that all four found out they were pregnant at almost the same time. None of them had a stable relationship. None wanted to admit who the father was. And yet, they all agreed on one thing: they had trusted the same person.
His name appeared underlined in the letter and was repeated several times in the folder notes: Alfonso Mera, a substitute History teacher, hired only for that school year and described by students as “charming,” “young,” and “excessively friendly.”
According to Julia, Mera had managed to manipulate each of them differently. With Nerea, he pretended to be a confidant; with Clara, someone who protected her from bullying; with Marisa, an academic mentor; with her, Julia, someone who understood her complicated family life. In other words, he had been a predator hiding behind the mask of someone who cared about his students.
The letter described how, when the girls began to suspect that he had abused several of them at once, they tried to confront him. But Mera reacted coldly: he made them believe that no one would support them, that he had connections, that he could deny everything and turn them into “lying teenagers trying to ruin his life.” Then he proposed a “solution”: temporarily moving to a rural house that supposedly belonged to his family, where they could “spend the pregnancy in peace.”
Julia confessed that at that moment, they were not thinking clearly. None wanted to face their parents. None wanted to become newspaper headlines. And all were paralyzed by fear. So they agreed.
On March 14, 1991, after class, Mera drove them in his car, two at a time, to a small abandoned farmhouse near the Picos de Europa. Julia wrote that at first, it seemed like a refuge. But soon they realized it wasn’t a hideout, but a trap. The doors locked from the outside, they had no phone, and Mera returned every few days to leave food and repeat that “everything would be fine if they stayed quiet.”
The letter ended abruptly:
“If this ends badly, let the truth be known. We didn’t leave because we wanted to. We were taken. And we’re not the only ones.”
Eusebio felt a chill. Not just because of what the letter revealed, but because of a phrase that appeared repeatedly in several papers in the folder:
“Search the old building — testimonies — classroom 3B.”
That’s when he understood there was more.
Much more.
Eusebio decided not to go to the police immediately. He wanted to verify, at least partially, what he had found. The “old building” was still standing, though it had been closed for years due to dampness issues. No one went in. No one except him, who had keys to every door.
Inside, he went to classroom 3B. Dust covered the desks, and frayed wires hung from the ceiling. On one side, he found a rusty metal filing cabinet. He pulled it open and found a folder identical to the first one, though better preserved. Inside were loose sheets containing handwritten statements from other students, all dated between January and March of 1991.
There was the missing piece: other students had also suspected Alfonso Mera. Some mentioned seeing him enter the audiovisual room with different girls. Others said he erased and rewrote tutoring schedules without warning. One girl reported that he asked her overly personal questions and touched her arm in an uncomfortable way. There was even a drawing of Mera’s car license plate.
The most alarming item was a report written by the school counselor, dated two weeks before the disappearances, suggesting a formal investigation into Mera for “improper behavior.” Someone had written in red ink on the margin: “DO NOT PURSUE — Director’s orders.”
Eusebio closed his eyes. He remembered that director perfectly: a strict man with political connections, obsessed with avoiding scandals. He had died more than ten years ago.
The entire puzzle was beginning to fit together.
But the essential question remained: What had happened to the girls?
Eusebio went to the rural property registry of Cantabria. After hours of searching, he found that Alfonso Mera had inherited a small house in a remote area of Liébana. It matched the description in the letter.
He went there.
The farmhouse was half-collapsed from the passage of time. The main door gave way easily. Inside, he found remnants of old mattresses, food cans, water bottles dated 1991. And in a corner, half-hidden under wooden planks, a children’s notebook with four names written on the cover: Nerea, Clara, Marisa, Julia.
The content was devastating. Short notes exchanged between the girls:
— “He didn’t come today. There’s no milk left.”
— “I heard a car, but it wasn’t him.”
— “My belly hurts.”
— “We have to get out.”
The last page was written in a hurry:
“We’re going to try tonight. We can’t stay here. If he finds us, you know what happens.”
Whether they managed to escape was never known. There were no remains, no signs of struggle, no new clues. But now there were enough documents to reopen the case, prove the manipulation, and expose the network of silence that had covered it up.
Eusebio handed everything over to the authorities. Subsequent investigations revealed that Mera had left Spain in 1992 and had been living under another identity in Portugal, where he was eventually arrested. He never confessed to what happened that night in the rural house.
But thanks to the janitor, the silence was finally broken.
And the town of Santander, thirty years later, could finally speak their names again.
Nerea.
Clara.
Marisa.
Julia.
Four stories that were no longer buried.