Fourteen months after his disappearance, today the first indication has emerged of where Josep Català Vidal, a 59-year-old resident of Sort, could be. This morning a man spotted the remains of a vehicle among the undergrowth in a ravine in the Vall d'Àssua, in Pallars Sobirà. Inside was the corpse of a person. In the absence of officially confirming the identity of the deceased, the main hypothesis is that it is Català since the license plate of the SUV in which he was found matches that of the vehicle he was driving on October 25, 2022, the last day he was seen alive.
The Mossos d'Esquadra and the Generalitat Bombers searched the Vall d'Àssua intensively by land and air, on October 26 and 27, without success. The underwater unit also joined the search in the area's swamps, as did groups of volunteers. The Tremp Mossos d'Esquadra took over the investigation. Although everything pointed to an accident or that Català had taken his own life, all hypotheses were open.
The man worried the residents of Sort and Pallars Sobirà as he was a well-known person in the region and they found no trace of his whereabouts.
Josep Català left his house in Sort around 9 in the morning on October 25 last year. He had an appointment with his GP at 10:30, but did not show up. His wife, worried, notified the Mossos and the search protocols were activated.
Sources close to Català explained that shortly after 9 a.m. a resident of Sort identified him aboard his SUV, a gray Mitsubishi Montero with license plate L-2437-Z, at the roundabout in this town, and heading towards La Vall. d'Àssua. The last people who saw him were two people, at 11:30, at the intersection in the town of Altron.
The day he left, Català had left his wallet at home and close friends commented that he had not been in good spirits for some time. He worked driving a truck and knew the Pyrenees very well. Despite the intense searches in the Vall d'Àssua, no clue was ever found until this morning when a car was accidentally found, which plunged about 500 meters to the bottom of a ravine. In the absence of tying up all the dots and officially confirming the identity of the body, the indications are that it could be Josep Català.
