The legal proceedings against Nacho Cano and several employees of his production company Malinche continue and the magistrate has issued an order in which she sets out the evidence of criminality compiled by the national police. In it, it can be read that the company’s production company created a WhatsApp group with all the supposed scholarship recipients from Mexico in which she gave them instructions on how to enter Spain without problems. “They come as tourists, they must not mention to immigration that they are going to study,” the suspect writes to them in capital letters. Cano and three other employees of his company have been charged with a crime against the rights of foreign citizens and workers for having allegedly brought 20 young Mexicans to work on their musical under the cover of being students. The order also states that the company Malinche made transfers to itself with the concept of paying the scholarships, that it paid the Mexicans below the agreement and that they had to resort to relatives and savings to survive in Madrid.
The police became aware of the alleged irregularities when one of these alleged students reported the incident to the Centro police station in January. This girl showed investigators the WhatsApp group created by Roxana, the Cano employee, in which she gave them precise instructions. The police verified, through databases, that the group of Mexicans had entered Spain on different days with a tourist visa and that it was a month and a half later when a lawyer requested a visa permit as students. Roxana instructed them to pretend they did not know each other at the airport and gave them a return ticket to present at immigration in case they were asked for it, according to the court order.
The conditions under which the young people travelled to Spain included a training programme from December 2023 to November 2024 or early 2025. They were assured that they would be given 300 euros a month for personal expenses, as well as accommodation in a hostel in central Madrid and a midday meal. This amount was insufficient for their daily life, according to the investigations and testimonies collected by the police, and the false students had to resort to savings and ask their families for money. The court order also states that Roxana had told them that they had exclusivity as they were scholarship recipients and that they could not have any other job.
According to the judge, the group began rehearsing with the rest of the dancers the day after landing in Madrid and ended up forming part of the cast of Malinche. “Management tells me that this week you are performing every day: Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday,” reads another message sent to the WhatsApp group. Through posts on social networks and surveillance, the agents verified that the group had a fixed schedule, that they performed at the show with other dancers and also at the disco after the show. The agents followed the steps of the young people and the company employees for five months and confirmed that the work routines were constant over time and that they had a fixed schedule.
The company’s lawyer requested the Government Delegation to regularise the group as students between 25 and 29 January, a month and a half after their arrival. He then did so for 19 of them, because, as Nacho Cano himself explained in a press conference, the complainant had been expelled from the group for being a “problematic person”. She had warned those responsible that she was going to notify the police after demanding better conditions without being listened to. In this request from the lawyer, Cano’s company assured that it was going to register the boys in the Jana academy course and presented proof of transfer of expenses to cover the scholarship, in which the issuer and beneficiary of the same was the company itself: Malinche. In May, the Government Delegation denied these requests and notified the company. “The intention to deceive the Spanish authorities when it comes to transporting the dancers within the national territory is reinforced by the delay in processing the respective applications for authorization to stay for study purposes,” the judge writes.
The analysis of the images and videos of the show also allowed the agents to identify the supposed scholarship recipients working on stage and also in the discotheque that opens behind it. “Some of the selected ones brought from Mexico can be clearly seen dancing, singing or playing an instrument in the performance, fully characterized, made up and dressed in clothes from the musical or T-shirts with the logo of the show.” Malinche“, reads the order.
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With all this information, in June the police went to the dancers’ rehearsal room together with the labour inspectorate and then took statements from the entire group of alleged students at the police station. Now, the judge orders as next steps that all the alleged victims be heard again in court and that the minutes of the labour inspection be provided to them, as well as the available data on Malinche in Social Security, the Commercial Registry and the teaching authorization of Jana, the school that was supposedly going to take charge of the training of these young people.
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