IT is the most famous disappearance in history, and the case of missing toddler Madeleine McCann has never been solved.
Less known is that Olive Press editor Jon Clarke was the first journalist on the scene after taking a crack-of-dawn journey to the Algarve just hours after she vanished.
The start of a two-decade connection to the case, he immediately believed the three-year-old had been snatched by a predatory paedophile and his opinion has never wavered.
The following year in May 2008 he explained why the arrest of her parents was wide of the mark and he has since appeared in many documentaries and written a book, My Search for Madeleine.
The Olive Press has broken at least a dozen key stories on the case and continues to work closely with numerous sources in the UK, Germany and Portugal to try and solve it.
In May 2008 we ran rather more cheerful news that the controversial Los Merinos golf project of 2000 homes in Ronda had been postponed for ‘at least a year’.
Under the headline, ‘Bunkered’, we revealed that a shortage of buyers was the main reason, largely put off by the numerous environmental issues affecting it.
It came following our shocking scoop the previous autumn that hundreds of ancient oaks had been uprooted, despite it not having planning permission.
It was timely that we also ran a passionate op-ed article by the frontman of the Stranglers, Hugh Cornwall, about how too much dodgy development was being allowed on the Cadiz coastline.
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His plea: ‘Don’t let them Strangle the Costa de la Luz’ helped to put a stop to various schemes, some of which – including a dodgy polo hotel we reported in February – are still doing the rounds.
“The reason I like it around El Palmar is it is unspoilt and if they develop all these awful hotels around here it will ruin it,” he told the Olive Press.
“It’s a real gem and you really shouldn’t sell off the crown jewels.”
Later in the month, the front page had a very different flavour with our story that a teenage girl had invited 400 revellers to her luxury villa in Marbella, ending in the place getting trashed.
The story about Jodie Hudson’s party was followed up around the world, including in the Daily Mail who dedicated an entire page 3 to it.
In sadder news we revealed how the son of Sixties psychiatrist RD Laing, who championed the use of LSD, had ben found dead on Formentera.
Sources told us that Adam Laing had died after ‘a wild night gone wrong’ on the island off Ibiza.
We also revealed how the Olive Press had got involved in trying to bring an incredible tranche of Spanish Civil War photos back to Spain.
The photos taken by celebrated war photographers Robert Capa, Gerda Taro and David ‘Chim’ Seymour had been found in an attic in Mexico having been smuggled out of Spain during the war, via France.
Dubbed the ‘Mexican Suitcase’ they included never-seen shots of Ernest Hemingway and poet Gabriel Garcia Lorca.
In May 2010 we revealed Annie Lennox was the proud owner of two properties in inland Spain.
Under our headline Going for a Song we reported the Eurythmics star was selling the two simple homes in the classic white village of Olvera for just €70,000.
The sale made the Scot a very modest €10,000.
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She had bought the homes under the name ‘Ann Lennox’ in 2007.
One of our greatest investigations came in May 2014 when we exposed the fraudulent antics of one of the costas most famous expat characters.
Gold trader Nigel Goldman was the charitable darling of the Costa del Sol with a weekly column in the Euro Weekly News and appearing regularly on his best friends radio show on Talk Radio Europe.
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But behind the glitter he was conning people to the tune of hundreds of thousands, while being probed by the police back in the UK.
In our five-page expose we revealed how he had wined and dined a series of seasoned global criminals, while writing his newspaper column.
They included Max Clifford as well as at least three fraudsters and sex offenders.
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