The Civil Guard has arrested a couple who are accused of at least 93 robberies in churches in 82 towns, the majority in Cantabria but also in Asturias and Palencia. The detainees took the money collected in the brushes and various objects.
The Government delegate in Cantabria, Ainoa Quiñones, reported the details of Operation Sanandrés together with the Bishop of Santander, Manuel Sánchez Monge, and the head of the Civil Guard in the region, Antonio Orantos, at a press conference at the who have shown the 140 objects from churches that were intervened during their detention on April 26.
The couple, a man and a woman aged 41 and 45, residing in Villacarriedo (Cantabria), were looking for temples far from urban centers and used up to four different vehicles “to avoid the action of the Civil Guard,” Quiñones explained.
The main objective of the robberies was money. In one of the temples, in the Sanctuary of Valvanuz in Cantabria, 1,000 euros were stolen from the donations of the Christmas nativity scene. However, they were not his only target. The couple also took ecclesiastical objects, presumably for later sale, such as iconographies, keys, pianos, radios, loudspeakers or even church chairs, all without much market value.
They also stole from the churches images, cases with oil paintings, small chests with keys to the tabernacles, reliquaries for oleas, temple keys, two carved wooden bases for the coffins, as well as “a large number of small value coins from collections and beggars.” of the churches”.
According to the police investigation, the woman was the one who carried out a preliminary study of the temples that were later assaulted, “in which considerable damage was caused.”
Two officers detained the couple on different days. First, an operative arranged for the security of the Camino Lebaniego allowed a patrol to stop the suspicious vehicle during one night in the town of Tama, in Cantabria. Days later, in the Cantabrian town of Quijas, another Civil Guard patrol identified the same couple carrying tools similar to those of Tama in the vehicle.
With all the evidence and given the suspicion of the start of a new wave of robberies in churches, an operation was arranged that allowed the suspect to be identified driving a vehicle in which he hid tools that could be used to steal and a night vision, after which he was arrested.
Subsequently, and at her home in Villacarriedo, the woman was arrested, subsequently conducting a search of the house and where the agents found a large number of effects from the robberies.