Stolen roller coaster from Bilbao turns up running in New York

The Cyberspace vanished in Barakaldo and reappeared in New York

In the height of August 2003, the Cyberspace was the queen of Bilbao's festivities: a 450-tonne roller coaster, an Xtended SC 2000 model from German manufacturer Maurer AG, that toured Spanish funfairs. A court seizure took it out of circulation. The courts ordered it dismantled and placed in a fenced-off plot in Barakaldo. And there it vanished.

Its disappearance was no mystery to the locals, but it took a while to become a scandal. The ride reappeared years later operating in New York. To grasp the scale: moving 450 tonnes requires a fleet of 11 trailers, with permits, cranes and a police acompañante. This is not a job for a van and two friends.

The court custodian, prime suspect

The reconstruction of the case, documented in the Basque press, points to there being no movie-style thieves. Bilbao's Court of First Instance number 7 seized the ride in 2003 over debts to the German manufacturer itself and appointed a court custodian. It was precisely that custodian who took it away, according to published reports. The theory of a scrap dealer hauling off 450 tonnes without anyone noticing holds up neither physically nor bureaucratically.

The case illustrates the fragility of Spanish court custody arrangements. There are precedents that take your breath away: in 2006, the Reina Sofía Museum "lost" a 38-tonne steel sculpture by Richard Serra. And in Gijón, the stevedoring company controlled by the Port Authority referred to the Prosecutor's Office the disappearance of 123,000 tonnes of coal from its facilities. The roller coaster is not an exception, it is a pattern.

Who answers when a roller coaster goes missing?

The question is simple and the answer is nowhere to be found. The judicial proceedings have dragged on for years and administrative responsibilities remain murky. The machinery of the state can seize, seal and store, but not safeguard. And when the asset disappears, the investigation becomes a labyrinth from which no one emerges worse off.

Meanwhile, in New York the Cyberspace is running. The anecdote has a touch of dark comedy: if the mountain won't go to the mountain, the roller coaster will go to New York. What is baffling is not that the ride reappeared on the other side of the Atlantic. It is that, with 450 tonnes as evidence, there is still no official explanation that adds up.