More than 16 years after Madeleine McCann disappeared from the apartment rented by her parents in Praia da Luz, in the Algarve, the intervention of the Portuguese authorities is coming to an end. In Portugal, the investigation is long overdue for completion. The statute of limitations for the crime of murder, which ends after 15 years, was only interrupted with the constitution of Christian Bruckner as a defendant, but the period cannot be extended forever.

The only suspect in the disappearance of the English child, Christian Bruckner, is in prison in Germany, for the rape of a septuagenarian American woman also in Praia da Luz. The 46-year-old German is preparing to be tried in Braunschweig for five others crimes committed in the Algarve, next year. Bruckner faces three counts of rape and two counts of harassment of minors. One of the harassments involved an English child on Salema beach, just a month before Madeleine McCann disappeared.

Braunschweig prosecutor Hans Christian Wolters insists he has "material evidence" that Madeleine is dead and that the killer is Christian Bruckner. However, three years after the revelation, the only suspect has not been charged.

The BBC's "Panorama", one of the main investigative programs on English public television, guarantees that the McCanns remain silent both about the latest clues pointing to their daughter's death and about the apology made to them by PJ later this year.

The case began to be investigated by inspector Gonçalo Amaral, who ended up dismissed after having publicly commented on it to a newspaper. The former inspector later published a book and a documentary accusing the McCann couple of murdering their daughter and simulating a kidnapping. Gonçalo Amaral maintains this thesis to this day, despite the legal case that pitted him against the McCanns and which he ended up winning in September last year at the European Court of Human Rights. Even so, the investigation hypothesis he raised was completely discredited by all the authorities involved. The PJ itself, currently led by Luis Neves, remains alongside the German police, considering that the only "credible" suspect is the German Christian Bruckner, who lived in Portugal between 1998 and 2017.