One year after Madeleine McCann disappeared from the holiday apartment her parents Kate and Gerry had rented in Praia da Luz, the cook who had worked at the Tapas Bar where the McCanns dined every evening of their holiday, broke her silence.
From 1.06 on the video, the subject is the employees who worked at the Tapas Bar on the evening Madeleine McCann disappeared. Translation is by Joana Morais and I have transcribed as faithfully as possible to Joana's original text.
Presenter: These 8 employees didn't see their contracts renewed this year. They were obliged in the last 12 months to be silent, forbidden to talk with journalists. Since they contracts were not renewed they decided to talk.
SIC has spoken to the cook. She doesn't "show" her face, but a year later and without working in the Ocean Club, Manuela decided that she wasn't obliged to the silence any more. The cook who prepared a "Robalo" fish with cuscus and the pepper steak meal the McCanns had to dinner in the night Maddie disappeared was in the griller area, 3 meters away from the table of the couple. The former employee from th Tapas tells us that immediately various colleagues left their work post to help the searches.
Manuela: Meanwhile, in the hours that followed, during most of the time, the McCanns stayed inside the apartment. My colleagues were indignated [angered/offended] because they went. One of them even had his feet all red, tired, and he was offended because he went to search though he wasn't anything related to the girl and the parents didn't. They stayed indoors in the apartment.
A year ago, suddenly everything changed in the Ocean Club. The quiet resort, ideal for family holidays, was invaded by police and journalists. The Ocean Club and Tapas turned into a pandemonium. No one could get out and no one could get in. Even if we were married, our husbands couldn't get in, neither our friends. Everything was surrounded. The security officers didn't know the employees. They thought the employees were journalists.
In the beginning, everything was really complicated. The Judiciary was in a full scale operation to Praia da Luz. For more than a month the investigators created a kind of head quarters in one of the apartments of the Ocean Club. All the employees from the resort were heard. They all went in two..in two hours by two hours, two [referring to the number of people in pairs] during some time. Close to a month. We were almost 200 employees.
Presenter: Manuela remembers seeing Madeleine some times. When the parents would put her at the crèche, in the babysitters, the kitchen was next to it.
How was Madeleine's routine during those holidays? When she entered there in the Ocean Club?
Manuela: She got in, was delivered to the babysitters. The babysitters would do a class: they would do a group course with the girls. Between 4pm and 4:30pm they had something to eat. In the morning they had a fruit lunch. [breakfast?] And the parents would come to pick them up at 5 o'clock in the afternoon.
Presenter: In the middle of those children, do you remember Maddie?
Manuela: Because she entered there, she would wave goodbye or say hello..She was really nice [lovely/polite] She was always smiling.
Presenter: After the disappearance of the girl, several family members of Kate and Gerry came to the Algarve.
Manuela: I remember the family members. Instead of being worried with the family, would go to the pool, rented the tennis court, played tennis....Instead of being worried with the child that was disappeared.
Presenter: The majority of the employees who was in the Tapas in the night of Maddie's disappearance, as all left the resort.
Manuela: The contract ended and they sent us to unemployment.
Presenter: All the team that was in the Tapas that night?
Manuela: All the team that was there in that night.
Presenter: After the disappearance of Maddie, the McCanns stayed in the Ocean Club for more 65 days. In July they moved to a house in the outskirts, away from the journalists eyes. It was there that they stayed until 9 of September, the day that they went back to England.
Video by HiDeHo
Translation by Joana Morais
