Cultural Divide

After Kate and Gerry McCann prayed for a miracle at Fatima, the holiest Roman Catholic shrine in Portugal, on May 23, they embarked on an international tour to publicize the disappearance of their daughter Madeleine. The 3-year-old (by now she'd be 4) vanished from the family's holiday apartment in southern Portugal on May 3, while the McCanns dined with friends in a tapas restaurant just 100 yards away. The Roman Catholic community in Fatima wrote a special prayer for the occasion of Kate and Gerry's visit: "Dear God, please change the hearts of the people who have Madeleine to give her back." Surrounded by crowds of Portuguese who wept when the couple lit a candle, and who sent their own children to kiss Kate's cheek, the two British doctors, both devout Roman Catholics, were treated like honorary Portuguese. Back in Praia da Luz, the tiny vacation resort where Maddie had disappeared on May 3, the family was given their own key to the village church, allowing them to seek sanctuary at any time. Locals plastered shop windows with FIND MADDIE posters.

All these months later, the prayers at Fatima have been far from answered, as Madeleine's parents have become the target of ever-growing suspicion and even hostility in Portugal. To the incredulity of many following the search for Madeleine from afar, last week the police named the McCanns as suspects in the disappearance of their own daughter.

The shockwaves were almost palpable. This was the same couple that had seemingly done nothing since Madeleine vanished except try to find her. They'd raised more than $2 million for a "Find Madeleine" foundation. They'd won the support of numerous celebrities, including "Harry Potter" author J. K. Rowling and soccer star David Beckham—not to mention the pope, who granted an audience to the McCanns at the Vatican in late May. In July, Gerry McCann even met with U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales prior to setting up a YouTube channel in collaboration with the International Center for Missing & Exploited Children. And yet when Kate McCann was led into a Portuguese police station for questioning, she was jeered by some of the spectators who had gathered behind police barriers.

The Madeleine story, which has echoes of the sensational JonBenet Ramsey case in the United States, is as big in Portugal as it is in Britain. With the McCanns under suspicion, the media sometimes seem to be taking sides in a saga that has highlighted a cultural divide in Portugal's Algarve Coast, which in recent years has been colonized by British holidaymakers. "It's probably the biggest story since Princess Diana," says Matt Drake, a reporter for Britain's Sunday Express, who has been reporting from Portugal. For several weeks now, the Portuguese press has been chock-a-block with fact and fiction about Kate and Gerry McCann's alleged role in their daughter's disappearance, including some unsavory and unsubstantiated claims about the parents.

To the consternation of British reporters who descended on the Algarve, some of the leaks have come from the Portuguese police despite Portuguese segredo de justica (secrecy of justice) laws that are supposed to prevent the release of information in a criminal investigation into the public domain. The police's apparent willingness to speak off the record to the Portuguese papers, but not to the British media, adds to the sense of a cultural battle. A remarkably detailed description of Kate McCann's police interrogation found its way into the Portuguese newspaper Diario de Noticias last Sunday, including a vivid account of her emotional state on being confronted with various pieces of evidence. If based on a police leak, such revelations would seem to defeat the segredo law, which also prevents the McCanns from making any counterstatement about their police interviews.

Also feeling wronged, the Portuguese media complain that the McCanns and their inner circle of supporters have favored the hometown news teams. On Sunday, the Jornal de Noticias complained that news of the McCanns' departure for England that day "was transmitted to British journalists by Justine McGuinness"—one of the McCanns' spokespersons—"during a meeting which the Portuguese press were not allowed to attend." The newspaper went on to accuse McGuinness of being deliberately misleading: "Shortly afterward, she told Portuguese press that no activity was foreseen for that day."