Twenty years before Jay Slater went missing in Tenerife, a young Brit vanished on the Spanish island.
Apprentice bricklayer Jay, 19, disappeared on June 17 in the remote Rural de Teno area of Tenerife while holidaying for a three-day music festival with friends. The teen left his pals to travel to a quiet Airbnb with two other partygoers in the early hours of the Monday and attempted to walk back to his accommodation that morning.
Jay began the treacherous 11-hour trek on foot and called a friend to tell her that his phone was on one percent battery, he was thirsty and had cut his leg on a cactus. His phone last 'pinged' somewhere in the mountainous region near the village of Masca, where Spanish police focused their search before officially calling it off last Sunday.
But Jay's parents, Debbie and Warren, brother Zak, and close family and friends, have vowed to continue the hunt to find the Lancashire teen and remain in Spain looking for answers, with the help of a £45,000 GoFundMe raised by kind strangers and the aid of a former police detective and voluntary mountain climber.
Debbie has spoken of the family's suffering in a statement released by British overseas missing persons charity LBT Global. She said: "We are a very close family and are absolutely devastated about his disappearance. Words cannot describe the pain and agony we are experiencing. He is our beautiful boy with his whole life ahead of him and we just want to find him."
Jay is not the first young Brit to go missing on the island - almost exactly two decades before, a 24-year-old promoter vanished. Kevin Ainley was from Fleetwood, Lancashire, and moved to the tourist area of Playa de las Americas three months before disappearing on June 14, 2004. He was last sighted walking in the direction of a bar called the Sportsman handing out flyers.
His passport and belongings were found in his apartment. Spanish police launched an investigation which Lancashire Police later reviewed, but Kevin was never found. In a 2016 appeal, his sister Gemma Brooke said the family was "desperate for answers". She said: "It is no exaggeration to say we have been put through 12 years of hell. Somebody must know something."
She added: "I just hope that if someone does know something they can find it in their hearts to come forward and help put us out of our misery." Then on June 13 this year, just a few days before Jay vanished, she posted on a Facebook page dedicated to his case: "Never gets easier... the pit of empty space that lives in our family. I miss you terribly r kid."