Slater was last heard from on the morning of June 17, when he told a friend on the phone he was lost in the mountains and desperately thirsty. He had earlier met two men at a music festival on the Spanish island and followed them back to their cottage.
On Sunday (AEST), the search for him narrowed to a crop of buildings near the small mountain village of Masca where he was last seen. Officers from the Guardia Civil could be seen circling two structures at the bottom of a ravine in Rural de Teno Park. They were looking into blue barrels outside one of the small buildings.
The area, just a few hundred metres from where Jay’s phone pinged for the final time, had already been searched on Thursday.
A police spokesman said all lines of investigation were open. “There is no more information on the matter.”
Police have been joined in their search by dozens of volunteers from the UK who have flown to Tenerife to help find Slater.
The teenager’s family and friends have also travelled to the island and several of them visited the search site on Sunday.
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The group included his father, Warren, and brother, Zak, who visited the cottage where Slater was last seen.
Through floods of tears, Warren said: “I just want the boy back.”
Earlier, Debbie Duncan, Jay’s mother, had said: “I’m just exhausted. I’ve not slept for five days.
“I’m still hopeful. I’m not feeling negative just yet. I don’t know what it’s been like today because I’ve been advised to stay away because I would just break down. We’re all devastated. He’s just a normal boy from a little town in Lancashire. These things don’t happen.”
She also dismissed online conspiracy theories comparing her to Karen Matthews, who carried out a fake kidnapping scam 16 years ago.
The case has prompted intense public interest, with a Facebook page dedicated to “Finding Jay Slater” having reached more than 500,000 members. A GoFundMe page set up by Slater’s family and friends has also raised £30,000 ($57,000) in three days.
Slater travelled to Tenerife with two friends to attend the NRG music festival on June 16. He left the festival between 3am and 6am in the car of two other British men he had met that night.
At 7.30am he posted a picture on Snapchat showing him smoking a cigarette at the doorway of a cottage in Parque Rural de Teno, more than 48 kilometres from where the festival was held to the south of the island.
About 8am Ofelia Medina Hernández, the owner of the two-bedroom Airbnb property where Slater had travelled to, came across the teenager standing at a nearby bus stop.
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He asked when the next bus was to Los Cristianos, a resort area where he had been staying, and she signalled it was not for another two hours. Instead of waiting, Slater decided to walk.
After setting off, he rang his friend Lucy Law, who had joined him at the music festival, and said he was lost, thirsty, had 1 per cent charge left on his phone, and had cut his leg on a cactus.