Fifteen witnesses have so far declared that on the fateful night when two leisure venues in Murcia burned down, where 13 people died, “they saw the flames coming out of the air conditioning unit of Teatre, and that an employee from the room tried to turn them off without success”. Now there is also speculation about the possibility that the fire extinguishers were expired, another of the many questions that hang over an event that could have been avoided.
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Pedro López Graña has indicated that “it is very serious that the premises lacked a license and that is why we will act forcefully”. He confirmed that, “apparently, they did not have the minimum security conditions, they did not have evacuation exits, emergency lights or extinguishing systems”. For the time being, the capital’s District Court 3 took on Tuesday the proceedings opened for thirteen crimes of reckless homicide. Summary secrecy has been decreed.
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Hypotheses, doubts and opposing opinions between the administration and those responsible for the affected premises. How is it possible for the establishments to remain open despite the closure order that was decreed by the City Council on October 11, 2022 and that ended up being unfulfilled. The first and only conclusion, for now, is that the order ended up in limbo, although there are those who believe that it is a case of “consented irregularities”.
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The decree of the former Councilor for Urbanism of the City Council of Murcia, Andrés Guerrero (PSOE), which was exclusively accessed by the newspaper LaVerdad de Murcia, ordered the Inspection of the Council’s Works and Activities Service to ” pay a visit” to the Teatre de Las Atalayas nightclub and, “in the event that it has not been executed voluntarily, proceed to the forced execution by sealing the establishment”. This was stated in the document that the then head of the department sent to this municipal area, dated October 11, 2022. This order was “not complied with in view of the content of the report of the inspector who was entrusted to undertake the above-mentioned check”. This act records, dated October 21, that, “in response to the order to cease activity and the warning of enforcement, once contacted with the ownership of the aforementioned premises, they declare and they provide justification for the presentation of the technical documentation they lacked for the processing of the legalization”. Guerrero insists that “this is what we are investigating”. Yesterday the City Council of Murcia removed as a precautionary measure the officials who intervened in the file in 2022.
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On Tuesday it was learned that Teatre, despite the order to cease, satisfactorily passed a municipal health inspection in March 2023, which corroborates that “everyone knew that the place was working”. The document, drawn up by the City Council’s Veterinary Services, reveals that another inspection had taken place in February in view of alleged health irregularities that were subsequently resolved.
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The National Police is working with the hypothesis that the fire originated fortuitously, but derived from some imprudence in one of the three premises affected. The possibility of a short circuit has lost strength according to the aforementioned witnesses, who agreed that, once the fire was declared, the light took a few minutes to go out, which seems incompatible with an electrical failure. José Luis Gómez Calvo, event security expert and author of a technical report on the Madrid Arena tragedy, believes that, when “the owners of the venues decided to divide them with plaster, they left zero measures for the evacuation” and that the sharing with a false ceiling made them a thief.
