Although Manuel Delgado Villegas, also called Arropiero, was accused of up to 48 crimes committed over ten years along the Mediterranean coast, prosecutor Alejandro del Toro only considered that seven of them were sufficiently proven. However, the main serial killer in Spanish criminal history was never tried.
The Arropiero case is plagued by errors and oversights that put the Spanish judiciary in check. As soon as he was arrested and a multitude of mental dysfunctions were detected, he was admitted to the Carabanchel Psychiatric Center, where he was subjected to electroshocks to mitigate his aggressiveness and where he fell into oblivion.
The 1977 Amnesty Law led to his file being reopened and it was discovered that the inmate, in the six years he was locked up, never had a lawyer and, to make matters worse, his summary had been lost.
Juan Antonio Roqueta was appointed as the prisoner’s lawyer, the lost summary was found and his case was definitively closed when he was declared mentally ill. It was a personal decision by prosecutor Del Toro, who gave up asking for a death sentence for Manuel Delgado.
El Arropiero died on February 2, 1998 without ever having entered prison.
All the rivers of passion flow into the black chronicle: desire, greed, jealousy, anger, hatred, love, greed, ambition… There are no stories only of good and bad. There are stories full of nuances, half-truths, strengths and weaknesses, innocence and cruelty.
Dossier Negro is a biweekly black chronicle podcast. You can also find its chapters on podcast platforms such as iVoox, Spotify, Apple Podcasts or Google Podcasts, among others.
