Last Sunday, Spanish society woke up to the sad news of the devastating fire in the Atalayas de Murcia leisure area. 13 people died during the burning of the Teatre and Fonda nightclubs, which were part of the same building.
Just a few hours ago, a key piece of information was known: the space had been ordered closed for a year. “Teatre and Fonda Milagros, the two affected premises, have opened without authorization since the order to cease activity, which was issued in October 2022,” revealed Antonio Navarro, Urban Planning Councilor for the Murcia City Council.
The Let’s See program has been reporting on the event since last Monday and connecting with all kinds of people who can shed light on the matter. One of them was the lawyer of the owners of the Fonda nightclub, Francisco Adán. From the beginning, the lawyer has a clear objective: to convey that his clients “were not aware” of the order to close the premises.
“The City Council knows perfectly well that the premises were operating and at no time have my clients received notification of termination of the license, that is what they convey to me,” added Adán. Something to which Joaquín Prat wanted to make clear that it was the duty of the owners to know “if they have the license or not.”
According to Francisco Adán, his clients “are being publicly beaten” for something they were not aware of. “We work with a totally different hypothesis than the one they are considering. We have the hypothesis that it started in Teatre and was transmitted to the Fonda,” said the lawyer, thus transferring responsibility to the other nightclub.
Some words that made the presenters of the program explode. Joaquín Prat was outraged that “they dare to venture a hypothesis when not even the scientific police or the firefighters have done so.” Something that Patricia Pardo joined in: “This is a shame. What we have just experienced right now is embarrassing. It is incredible.”
Faced with this terrible event, the program also wanted to contact the chief of firefighters and civil protection of Alcorcón to give advice on how to act in the event of a fire in a nightclub. “We are not going to know what the emergency exits are if we do not look at them and that would have given a lot of people a chance of life,” said Raúl Esteban.
Likewise, he called for calm in these situations: “The greater the panic, the greater the heart rate, the greater the breathing, the greater the consumption of monoxide.” And trying to relax can increase the chances of survival, according to the firefighter. “Try to bend down and if we know the evacuation routes, try to go towards them because the rest will go to the exit where they entered,” he added.
