By Missing Persons Tenerife, 16th September 2025
Missing Persons Tenerife is an unofficial, voluntary organisation with the mission of assisting in missing persons cases without prejudice to age, sex, status, race, nationality, religion, or any other characteristic protected by law.
Our team’s mission is to offer crucial support during a person’s most vulnerable time. From May 2024 to 16th September 2025, our team was actively involved in 32 missing persons cases across the Canary Islands. While our primary focus is Tenerife, we were pleased to extend our support to 5 cases on neighbouring islands.
Key Case Demographics & Causes
This data reflects our direct involvement and is not part of official government statistics.
We work to understand the underlying reasons for a disappearance to best assist the authorities. In our cases, we identified the following key causes:
While a person may go missing for multiple reasons, in 34% of our cases, we identified the primary cause in our cases was
- 34% of cases were predominantly related to mental health.
- 22% of cases could be attributed to the loss, theft, or breakage of a mobile phone, , highlighting a common, modern vulnerability.
Of these cases, 22 were male and 7 were female.
All our cases involved adults; none were minors or linked to violent crime. Most individuals were foreign nationals, which highlights our unique role in providing a vital bridge between worried families and the appropriate reporting channels.
The Power of Informal Enquiries
A significant part of our work involves discreetly resolving cases before they escalate. Of the 32 cases we assisted with:
- 12 were “Informal Enquiries” which we were able to resolve without them ever becoming official police cases.
- All these resolved cases resulted in the person being found safe and well, or in need of medical assistance.
This valuable work often goes unrecorded in official statistics but is essential to our mission of providing swift, effective help.
The Broader Picture: Official Statistics
To provide greater context, we look to the latest official data. In the most recent annual report for the Spanish National Centre for Missing Persons (CNDES) recorded a total of for the Province of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, in 2024 the number of new reports of missing persons was 662, or which 119 are active (still under investigation), 495 resolved and separately categorised 8 minors absent from residential centres.
The CNDES notes that these high numbers are largely due to the many cases involving minors, most of whom are considered runaways or voluntarily absent
Protecting Privacy
This report compiles data from official public sources alongside statistics gathered from our own work. For privacy reasons, we will only provide specific, case-related data to the appropriate authorities, such as the Policia Nacional or Guardia Civil. Please refer to our Privacy Policy for more information on how we handle and process personal data.
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