Jay Slater search: His journey, outstanding questions and one final push to find missing teenager
In a corner of Tenerife, a winding, narrow road takes you towards a small village called Masca. At points on the route, the view of the sea below and the mountains above is breathtaking.
This place, with its handful of houses and cafes, nestled among ravines and rockfaces, is about a 40-minute drive from the parts of the island most British tourists know, but it might as well be a world away.
There isn’t the bustle of the resort towns in the south, with their clubs and bars. Instead, there are vast expanses of land that are arid and difficult to traverse on foot.
In the 13 days since the disappearance of Jay Slater, a 19-year-old apprentice bricklayer from Lancashire, the hikers and tourists who come to Masca have been joined by two more groups of people.
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Appeal for volunteers in Jay Slater search
The first are the emergency services, including the civil guard, volunteer firefighters and mountain rescue teams carrying out the so-far unsuccessful search for Jay. The second group are journalists like me, trying to understand a case shrouded in speculation and questions.
Jay’s journey
Those questions begin with Jay’s journey which started at Papayago, the nightclub where he was last pictured enjoying the end of the New Rave Generation (NRG) festival late on 16 June.
The club is in Playa De Las Americas, not too far from Los Cristianos where he was staying. Full of British revellers and near the beach, the strip is an area Jay would have been growing familiar with, having been at the festival for two days.
But on the event’s third and final night, instead of going back to the accommodation he was sharing with friends, Jay jumped in a car with two men, travelling to a small Airbnb in Masca.
This is where the information about his movements and whereabouts begins to thin, aside from the testimony of one eyewitness we met on our first full day in Tenerife.
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Ofelia Medina Hernandez runs a cafe above the Airbnb and says she saw Jay at about 8am on 17 June.
“He asked twice what time the bus came,” she told us. “He came back and he asked me again, and I told him again, at 10 o’clock.
“Later I got in my car, and I saw him, he was walking quickly, but I didn’t see him again after that,” she added.
Despite the door to the Airbnb being just yards from a bus stop which would have taken him back down south, Medina Hernandez described Jay walking in the wrong direction.
Another key component of the timeline is a conversation Jay had with a friend on the phone at around 8.30am that day. He told them he was walking back after missing a bus – a journey that would take 11 hours on foot.
He also said he was lost, in need of water, and only had 1% charge on his phone.
His phone is believed to have been last located near an observatory around an 18-minute walk away, which is where the efforts of the emergency services were focused in the first week.
The search
That visible flurry of activity included emergency services using a helicopter, drones and sniffer dogs.
However, as the days went on, that sprawling search became a more tightly focused one, with smaller groups of officers looking at pockets of land, like ravines and caves.
Pic: Adele-Momoko Fraser
Despite allowing us to film them at a distance, the teams, led by the civil guard, have refused to give much guidance on the ground, instead choosing to release updates and footage via WhatsApp.
With no news conference or formal interviews on offer, they’ve largely kept journalists in the dark.
‘I just want him back’
One group who are hoping for information and updates more than anyone else are Jay’s loved ones.
A small group of his friends and family have stayed in Tenerife, clearly struggling to come to terms with the void left by his absence and the prospect he might not return.
Pic: Adele-Momoko Fraser
On the first Saturday after his disappearance, we met his dad Warren and brother Zak for the first time and their anguish was clear.
Speaking to us near Masca, after trying to retrace Jay’s steps, Warren said he was “just hoping that somebody has helped him off this mountain”.
“That’s all I want, that somebody has helped him get off this mountain. I just want him back and that’s it. He’s, my son.”
His voice then cracked and he walked away from the camera and repeated: “I just want him back and that’s it.”
Despite his visible pain, Warren has also to push this search forward in his own way. Two days later in the town of Santiago Del Teide, we meet him again.
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Pic: Adele-Momoko Fraser
That afternoon he was tearful again – but determined, handing out flyers with a small group of friends.
Their reason for choosing the town, which is 7km away from Masca, was because of a grainy CCTV image that suggested Jay was last seen in the town’s square.
Online speculation
The family hinging so much hope on that information was an insight into how this case isn’t just about what’s happening on the ground, but also the narrative online.
A Facebook group called Jay Slater Missing – Only Official Group reached more than 500,000 members in less than a week and was inundated with speculation around the case, before comments in the group were restricted.
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Police share new CCTV image
The noise on social media, coupled with the situation, have added to his family’s distress, something his mother Debbie Duncan who is also in Tenerife, alluded to in a statement.
“I have every faith in them down on the ground and the amazing searches they are carrying out along with more amazing guys up there,” she said.
“As a family we are in a living nightmare. We have no further updates other than Jay is still missing and we are just ignoring the social media side of things.”
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It’s clear though that social media has not only hurt the family, they also feel it’s helped them too, a point Debbie made when specifically thanking Paul Arnott.
A hiker from Bedfordshire, he has travelled from Fort William in Scotland to Spain and promised to stay however long it takes to find the teenager.
Never too far from the police search, Paul has been scrambling down ridges and climbing hills on his own while regularly updating his followers in TikTok.
Away from the small screen is the reality of the situation, as the hunt for Jay enters its 13th day.
It’s a period that promises to be pivotal, with the Spanish Civil Guard calling on volunteer agencies such as Civil Protection and firefighters, as well as “individual volunteers who are experts in rugged search terrain” for a “massive search”.
In a case that has seen every twist and turn followed in places well beyond the rugged terrain of North West Tenerife, today feels like the beginning of one last push to try to find Jay Slater.
Marine Le Pen’s far-right National Rally party will get the biggest vote share in the first round of France’s parliamentary elections, according to exit polls.
As polls closed on the first round of voting on Sunday, National Rally had a strong lead at 33%, followed by the left-wing New Popular Front coalition on 28.5%.
President Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance party are polling third with an estimated 22%.
Addressing supporters in Henin-Beaumont, northern France, Ms Le Pen said: “For the moment nothing is won, and the second round will determine the outcome.”
She warned voters to “be careful” in the coming days, and urged them to “mobilise” ahead of the second round on 7 July.
The result is almost double the 18% National Rally achieved in the 2022 elections and puts them in good stead to become the largest party in France’s lower house.
Supporters of Marine Le Pen, French far-right leader and far-right Rassemblement National (National Rally – RN) party candidate, celebrate after partial results in the first round of the early French parliamentary elections, in Henin-Beaumont, France
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Who are National Rally?
France has a semi-presidential system – these elections are for the 577 seats in the National Assembly.
Mr Macron is the president and was elected in a separate presidential vote.
The system means there is both a president and prime minister – who have separate powers.
Mr Macron called an early parliamentary election after his Renaissance party was decimated by Ms Le Pen’s anti-immigration one in the European elections.
Her 29-year-old protégé and party leader Jordan Bardella has enjoyed a spike in popularity, particularly among younger voters on TikTok, amid increasing discontent with Mr Macron.
Jordan Bardella, President of the French far-right Rassemblement National. Pic: Reuters
He told supporters in Paris on Sunday evening: “Three weeks after the European elections the French people have given a verdict and they have confirmed their clear hopes for change.
“This is giving us hope throughout the country.”
He warned of the “dangers” of the second-place left-wing coalition and said its leader Jean-Luc Melenchon could put France in “existential peril”.
Mr Bardella therefore urged his supporters to rally ahead of the next vote and said “victory is possible” on 7 July.
Although the two-round vote means the final result may not be totally clear until next week, if National Rally ends up as the largest party, Mr Macron would be compelled to make him prime minister.
The French president and prime minister have been from different political parties only three times in its history.
A new political reality has been revealed in France, it has a new face and a new name – 28-year-old Jordan Bardella.
Frontman of the hard-right, he has helped propel National Rally to a clear-cut lead in the first round of parliamentary elections.
Bardella, the party’s choice for prime minister, stands on the brink of power if National Rally secures a majority in the second round of voting.
“I want to tell our supporters to mobilise so that they carry out a final effort next Sunday – next Sunday’s vote will be one of the most important in the history of modern France,” he said.
With roots in the collaborationist regime of Vichy France, National Rally has been re-engineered by Marine Le Pen as she has worked to make it electable – and acceptable – to the public.
Marine Le Pen and Jordan Bardella campaigning for the National Rally in June. Pic: AP
A key part of that scheme rests with Le Pen’s fresh-faced prodigy. Bardella told the media that a National Rally government would respect the country’s traditional republican values.
“I will always be the guarantor of your rights and freedoms and our republican values which unite us all. I promise you freedom, equality and fraternity,” he said.
They were challenged from the left by the New Popular Front, a hastily organised alliance of socialists, communists, greens and hard-left grouping France Unbowed.
Early results suggest they have finished a strong second, around 28% of the vote.
There is no doubt about losers here. Emmanuel Macron‘s centrist coalition, Ensemble, performed poorly, gaining just 21% of the vote.
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Extreme right is at ‘gates of power’
Now a case of damage control
When he called this snap election, Macron was taking a gamble the drubbing his alliance received in recent European elections would not be repeated. He was wrong.
Macron’s prime minister, Gabriel Attal, said it’s now a case of damage control: “Our goal is clear, we must stop the right from gaining an absolute majority in the first round.”
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Who are National Rally?
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Profile of National Rally leader Bardella
What happens next? Well, we will see a feverish week of campaigning as those candidates who have entered the final round seek to cement their advantage.
In constituencies where three people advance into the second round, parties will engage in frantic horse-trading to give their candidate the advantage.
Protesters against National Rally clamber on to the statue at the Republique Plaza in Paris on Sunday
Protesters and police clash
The country’s new political reality is also a moment of instability – both politically and on the streets.
After the results were announced, protesters erected barricades and broke windows in cities around the country.
Police responded with tear gas and baton charges.
The hard-right now have the national assembly within their grasp – but the implications of their success are unpredictable.
The search for Jay Slater in an area of Tenerife has been called off, police have said, nearly two weeks after his disappearance.
The British teenager, from Oswaldtwistle, near Blackburn in Lancashire, has been missing in Tenerife since 17 June, when he vanished the morning after a rave.
The Civil Guard called for volunteers to join a new search in the Masca area – near his last-known location – on Saturday.
It has now confirmed to Sky News that the search has ended. Police are keeping the investigation open and could yet open up searches in the south of the island, but have not provided an update.
A handful of volunteers turned up to help rescue teams on Saturday, forming a total group of 30 to 40 people scouring a huge area of rugged and hilly terrain.
The Los Carrizales ravine where Jay Slater was being searched for. Pic: Reuters
Mr Slater, 19, had been on holiday with friends on the Spanish island and was last pictured at Papayago, a nightclub hosting the end of the NRG festival, late on 16 June.
After the event ended, he got in a car travelling to a small Airbnb in Masca with two men, who police said on Saturday are “not relevant” to the case.
His last known location was the Rural de Teno Park in the north of the island – which is about an 11-hour walk from his accommodation.
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‘I just want him back’
A local cafe owner told Sky News he tried to catch a bus back to Los Cristianos, where he was staying.
Ofelia Medina Hernandez said she spoke to the teenager at 8am on 17 June, telling him a bus was due at 10am – but he set off walking and she said she later drove past him “walking fast”.
A missing persons poster for Jay Slater in Tenerife
The apprentice bricklayer called a friend holidaying with him at around 8.30am on 17 June and said he was going to walk back after missing the bus.
He also told his friend he was lost and in need of water, with only 1% charge on his phone.
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Teen’s disappearance in Tenerife shrouded in speculation
On Friday, Mr Slater’s friend Brad Hargreaves told ITV’s This Morning he had been on a video call with him before his disappearance when he heard him go off the road.
He said he could see his friend’s feet “sliding” down the hill and hear he was walking on gravel.
Meanwhile, Mr Slater’s family shared a blurry image of what they believe could be the missing teenager captured on CCTV in a nearby town 10 hours after he was first reported missing.
Mr Slater’s family shared a blurry image of what they believe could be the missing teenager
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Local police and the Civil Guard, along with Mr Slater’s family, have been involved in the search.
Since his disappearance, rumours and conspiracy theories have emerged amid online speculation on social media.
Some social media sleuths have even travelled to Tenerife to try and find him.
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