McPollo was brought from China in 2018. The Spanish athletics team He went to the Asian country to compete in the team World Cup. And on a day of tourism in Shanghai, the athletes saw the specimen in question in a souvenir shop: a plastic chicken with its mouth open. It was a crush. They bought him, brought him to Spain, painted the number 12 on his chest and he immediately became the official mascot of the national team.
Athletes from the lower categories played with him. The grown-ups took it with them on trips abroad. He was passed from hand to hand and, like the trophies that are won, he slept in different houses of the athletes, who took turns giving him shelter so that he never slept alone.
McPollo was so successful among national athletes that a kind of fever for Chinese plastic chicken was unleashed. T-shirts were made with his photo, which they wore to encourage their teammates. And they even opened an Instagram account (@McPolloESP) where the tribulations of the new standard of Spanish athletics were narrated.
A photo of chicken eating fuet Another one eating noodles. Another playing table football. Another traveling on the plane with the athletes. Another participating in the team parties. It’s not that he was one more; is that McPollo had become the life of the party. An essential element in the national team’s concentrations.
mysterious disappearance
But, one day, McPollo disappeared from the map. “We don’t know exactly when we lost sight of him.”explains to El Periódico de España, from the Ibérica Prensa Group, Diego García CarreraMadrid athlete from the national team who has been the one who has told on social networks of his ‘liberation’ by the Civil Guard.
Because McPollo was robbed. It is not known when, but it was stolen. “We started missing him months ago, because he had no activity on networks. “It coincided with the time when there were no competitions, so we didn’t know where it could be,” he tells us in a telephone conversation from Benicássim (Castellón), where the Spanish team is currently based.
“I realized when I saw the images that the Civil Guard had posted”. And it turns out that Benemérita has completed an operation at the Tenerife Sur-Reina Sofía Canarian airport, arresting 14 workers and investigating 20 more, who allegedly stole travelers’ suitcases.
Operation Oretel
It was called Operation Oretel. The detainees, according to sources from the Armed Institute, took advantage of their status as airport workers to commit the crimes. crimes. When the suitcases were transferred to the plane’s holds, they were loaded and unloaded at a slower pace and with greater distance between them; They also opened the luggage inside the hold, out of sight of the rest of the users and They punctured the zipper of the suitcases to open them completely.
Once they had removed the objects that interested them from inside, including jewelry, cell phones, watches, and electronic devices, they closed the zipper again to leave the suitcase without any signs of tampering. So that no one could notice these crimes, the detainees placed the suitcases as a parapet between the access door to the warehouse and its interior, They even placed safety curtains, specifically rigid tarpaulinswhich are actually intended to ensure that luggage does not move freely inside.
The Civil Guard carried out several searches, both at the lockers of these airport workers and in their private vehicles and homes. In total, they intervened 29 high-end watches, 120 pieces of jewelry (gold and gemstones), 22 high-end mobile phoneselectronic sections, 13,000 euros in cash and a high-end vehicle.
The value of all the stolen objects recovered amounts to 1,953,571 euros. The detainees also managed to sell many objects in physical and virtual second-hand stores, which is why 27 jewelry stores in the province of Santa Cruz of Tenerife.
Free McPollo
After the intervention, the Civil Guard posted photos of the recovered effects. And there, among suitcases, wallets and personal effects, there were a plastic chicken with its mouth open and number 12 in the chest that Diego García Carrera found extremely familiar. “Is he. He is our missing chicken.”
Mystery solved and happy ending. It didn’t take long for the athlete to post the discovery on his social networks from his concentration in Castellón where, as he confesses, “It was a day of relief and joy. “It is a very emotional moment for everyone.”the athlete confesses to this newspaper, between laughter and tears of emotion.
Now yes. Mcpollo, that plastic Chinese chicken with a wide open mouth that eats fuet and plays table football, has returned to his rightful place. His release will, without a doubt, be an incentive and an injection of morale for the championship that the athletes will compete in February, in an Olympic year, with their sights set on the Paris Olympic Games. Long live McPollo.
