PRAIA DA Luz residents and visitors faced a surreal experience last summer. May 3 changed everything at the tourist village as an astonishing level of media attention focused on Madeleine’s disappearance.
Reporters from television, radio, newspapers and magazines flocked to the Algarve and to Praia da Luz. Although fewer in number now, it is still possible to find one or two reporters out and about the Ocean Club.
The media coverage was so immense that it became a “case study” in television debates and opinion maker columns in daily newspapers across the world.
Journalists from the UK were joined by colleagues from Morocco, New Zealand, the United States and Spain, with many languages being heard for months in that little part of the Algarve.
What started out as a quiet and family-safe small holiday village became a suspicious and much more reserved community, running from cameras or reporters.
The other side of the story is that the media interest in the case remains as the only way for people to keep updated on Madeleine McCann’s sad story.
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