In the excellent documentary about José Luis Cerveto, The Pedralbes murdererCerveto himself (sentenced to two death sentences, later commuted to a sentence of thirty years) not only admitted his crimes, but explained them with a coldness and reasoning that was out of the ordinary. He knew what he had done and why he had done it (killing his bosses after they discovered that he had previously been convicted of child abuse), but he also wondered what purpose prison served if it did not rehabilitate. Prison is not a deterrent (as so many countries around the world demonstrate). Nor does it make you a better person (quite the opposite), nor does it repair any wrongs.
What it certainly serves is to keep certain individuals out of circulation. In the case of Cerveto, we see an uneducated, unbalanced man, aware of his ills, who resigns himself to his fate and wonders why no one has wanted to listen to him (psychiatrists, workers) or help him.
The sentence of last Thursday 29th, that of Daniel Sancho, is something different. A colorful (although it may seem a contradiction) page in the Spanish crime chronicle. Pink brushstrokes of crony smear, yellow brushstrokes of sensationalism, and a whirlwind of disinformation provoked by the legal team chosen by Rodolfo Sancho, whose true face we now know. Said team already had a history of muddling through unjust situations such as that of Dolores Vázquez or Myriam de la Sierra, to name two of many. After the announcement of that death in life that is life imprisonment, Daniel Sancho has, they say, burst into tears. It took him a year to fall from the cherry tree. Sonsoles has narrated it with sad chords from a music library. Ana Rosa has tried to get García Montes to open up, without any success (for tricksters, he). And thanks to reporter María Espinola (Cuatro) we finally know what Silvia Bronchalo, Daniel’s mother, thinks. She has been the only one who has maintained her dignity. “Blood-stained money” is the expression that, according to Espinola, Bronchalo has used to refer to Max’s documentary.
And that, and nothing else, is the truth. The truth about the money stained with blood. Will Daniel Sancho come out of prison as a grown-up? I doubt it very much. For now, the media-savvy lawyers will continue to extract money from the family, which is part of this lamentable spectacle.
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#Blood #money
