The jury room of the Barcelona Court was filled this Tuesday with a pain that was difficult to describe and could almost be touched with both hands. Head down, covering her face behind a manicured hair, Cristina Rivas Espejo listened to the story of the witnesses who paraded in the second session of the trial that is judging her for the murder of her four-year-old daughter, in Sant Joan Despí, in March 2021. Testified by her mother and the girl’s grandmother, one of her aunts and the little girl’s father, Sergio, a despondent man in psychological treatment since then, who described his ex-partner as a “self-centered,” “selfish,” “narcissistic” woman. “liar” and “manipulative” who always wanted to get her way, and who could not stand it when, two years after the couple’s disappearance, he started a new relationship with another woman. “I thought he had run away with my daughter to hurt me, but I could never imagine that she could do what she did,” she explained, overcoming the emotion and maintaining her temper.
The one who couldn’t help but break down on several occasions was the minor’s grandmother and mother of the accused. Conchi was accompanied by one of the police officers who are in charge of assisting the victims. She remained next to her, sitting, so that the grandmother could face an important statement in her view. Mother and daughter were living at the time of the crime with Conchi in her house, in Sant Joan Despí, and the woman was the last to see her granddaughter alive and the one who found her body, bruised, the next day on the bed in the one who slept with her mother.
The grandmother assured the prosecutor that she was not declaring out of resentment or pain, that everything she had told was the truth, her truth, but for her daughter she no longer felt anger, but rather a “hatred” that she had not mitigated. the past tense. “I think about my granddaughter every moment, and I only ask that the other image disappear from my head,” that of her lifeless body on the bed.
Conchi described her daughter as a “manipulative”, “liar” and “capricious”, who “never” was in love with Sergio and whom she always hurt a lot. The woman claimed that the first time they broke up the relationship it was her fault, for having another relationship in parallel, and that when they returned, she warned her to treat well this time a man for whom the witness praised him like person and as a father. “They came back, she got pregnant, they had my daughter and she came back with the same thing as always, with other men,” she said.
The first two years they were separated, when the girl was only two, the relationship was correct. She told both the victim’s grandmother and father. The woman explained that she saw her granddaughter whenever she wanted and her father was satisfied because despite the initial difficulties he had reached a separation agreement with shared custody that both respected. “My daughter was very happy, really.”
In fact, everything was going well until Sergio began to meet another woman, the mother of two girls his daughter’s age, with whom he gradually advanced in a relationship. “I knew that Cristina would end up finding out because my daughter would tell her without malice.” And at that moment, the man claimed, “harassment” began “with episodes of physical and psychological abuse” that became unsustainable for the man. “I didn’t report it because I only wanted the good of my daughter. I didn’t want to put my daughter through a court of law or have to decide between her father or mother. “I wanted her to have parents who, even though they were separated, got along well,” he explained.
Cristina then wanted to return to Sergio. Why? Prosecutor Félix Martín asked him that he made a special effort to treat the witnesses with exquisite gentleness in an interrogation that was not easy for them. “Well, because Cristina couldn’t stand that Sergio was happy, with another woman, and that my daughter was having a good time with the other girls at her father’s house. She could not. And I told him so. Leave him alone, you’ve already hurt him enough. But no, she didn’t stop,” said the grandmother.
Sergio narrated how Cristina came to lie to him, claiming that she had been diagnosed with cancer to try to get closer to him. “She was the mother of my daughter, my first love of youth. Of course I felt sorry for him, but I never, ever gave him hope of coming back. She no longer wanted to go through his lies again.” But she didn’t stop.
More than once, the father said, she sneaked into his home in Sant Boi and arrived at the door of his house to show up by surprise. One of the times she ran into him with her new partner. “She wanted us to talk but I refused. She then gave me a letter.”
A letter in which Cristina asked him to return, but with which he did not achieve his objective despite the fact that the woman assured him that she had changed, asked for forgiveness and assured him that everything would be fine from then on. Sergio’s silence was the trigger, in the prosecutor’s opinion, for the “evil” that was unleashed later.
Cristina ordered a souvenir piece that she left for her mother at a jewelry store, and wrote several letters and notes for her grandmother and her ex-husband. In them she basically blames Sergio for the girl’s death, followed by a suicide attempt that she did not succeed, because the woman was successfully treated by the emergency medical service. She left her grandmother written instructions about her burial and not to tell the hospital where she worked that she had committed suicide, but rather that she had died of something else. “I know you will never understand me, but don’t hate me. “I do it because of the hatred I feel for Sergio.”
Both the victim’s grandmother and father denied having seen emotional behavior unrelated to reality in all the years they lived with the woman, as Cristina’s defense tries to demonstrate.
The girl’s paternal grandparents and the doctors who initially assisted the woman also passed through the room and told how the night before she gave the little girl lorazepam and that the next day, when they found that her daughter was still breathing, , decided to suffocate her by covering her head with a plastic bag. Before her, she took her dog Bruno out for a walk.
The maternal grandmother’s last words were still echoing when the second session ended. “I have not forgiven her nor will I forgive her in her life. “My daughter died on May 31, 2021.”
