The red dust kicks up again as police vans rattle along the narrow rural tracks east of Portugal’s Praia da Luz, while the global press pack strains to peer beyond the cordons. For many, the scene is painfully familiar.

Eighteen years ago, the search for three-year-old Madeleine McCann gripped headlines worldwide after the toddler from Rothley, Leicestershire, vanished from her bedroom at the infamous Ocean Club holiday resort. Now, in this same arid Algarve scrubland, the echoes of that disappearance in May 2007 still linger.

But this time, nearly two years after the last search in 2023 – the most extensive since 2008 – a different urgency hangs in the dry air. Experts speak of a ticking clock, a new pressure driving this latest effort .

The catalyst behind this three-day scramble?

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