A court has determined that the chapel built in honor of the visionary of El Escorial was irregular, but that the two municipal officials of the Madrid town council should not be condemned for prevarication. The Provincial Court, as elDiario.es has learned, has annulled the sentences of four and a half months in prison imposed on a municipal architect and a department head of the town hall, understanding that “they acted in good faith” by allowing the provisional chapel , which has already been demolished, was built with an irregular license. He has also confirmed the absolution of the nuns of the congregation.
This is the last judicial chapter in the history of Luz Amparo Cuevas, the woman who claimed for decades to have been in contact with the Virgin of Sorrows since her first appearance in 1981. These alleged apparitions ended up bringing together hundreds of people each month at the farm. from Prado Nuevo in the Madrid mountains until his death in the summer of 2012. It was then that the congregation decided to build a chapel in his honor, as the Virgin had supposedly commanded in one of her many calls to the Earth.
The Justice has already determined, due to contentious-administrative matters, that the chapel had been built irregularly. The Madrid courts determined almost a decade ago that the provisional license that the Escorial council had granted to the Seglares Reparadoras to build the place of worship was illegal because that land was protected and not developable. The case reached criminal proceedings when the Association of Victims of these alleged apparitions filed a complaint against the municipal license holders as well as against the nuns.
The first sentence in the case, handed down by a criminal court in Madrid, understood that the Seglares Reparadoras had no responsibility but did understand that a municipal architect and an area head of the city council prevaricated because they knew that what they were doing was openly illegal. , even being warned by the Community of Madrid against granting that license. Now the Provincial Court has revoked this sentence and issued the acquittal of the two, understanding that, although the license was irregular, there is no evidence that they transgressed.
The judges do not dispute that the permit, as the contentious-administrative courts said, was irregular. “The illegality of the license is not questionable,” they recall. But they do consider that there are doubts that the two municipal workers granted it “knowingly” and acting on a “whim.”
The Madrid court concludes that they acted “in good faith” and seeking “a proportionate solution” to the problem that the city council of this town in northwest Madrid encountered: a “constant pilgrimage” of people to visit the self-proclaimed psychic and “concentrations” of hundreds of people every few days. Nobody “objected” to that license, their reports were “transparent” and there is no evidence that the technicians of the Community of Madrid were “clear” when warning them against granting it, as the first sentence that condemned them stated.
The first ruling that declared the administrative irregularity of the license came in 2016. The chapel was not demolished until 2020. Now the Madrid Court highlights that the construction “was easily dismantled in a short time”, just four days according to a witness, and that “no harm was caused to the environment.” “It has not been proven that any damage, much less irreversible, has been caused to the vegetation cover or to the other values objected to protection in the land on which the church was built,” the court decides.
Maintains the absolution of the nuns
Given this reasonable doubt, the court withdraws the prevarication sentences of four and a half months in prison for the municipal architect and the area head of the El Escorial town hall, and also rejects the appeal with which the Association of Victims of the Apparitions, The accusation that promoted the case requested to revoke the acquittal of the Seglares Reparadoras, who also sat in the dock in 2023. The Prosecutor’s Office had asked to confirm the previous sentence.
The court explains that it is not possible to review the evidence again to revoke an acquittal like the one issued by the criminal court on the nuns who worship the Virgin and the alleged clairvoyant. The resolution is still appealable before the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court.
This Association denounces that the congregation not only committed crimes in the construction of the already demolished chapel, but has also acted as a “sect” and targeting those it considers “accomplices of a vulgar psychic and her hallucinations.”
Other criminal sentences have dealt with collateral aspects of the plot behind the alleged apparitions. In March 2023, the Supreme Court confirmed the sentence of more than four years in prison for the leader of a foundation linked to these false appearances for avoiding paying Corporate Tax for years.
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