The island of Koh Samui is a Thai paradise with palm-fringed beaches, coconut forests, luxurious hotels and elegant spas. Google reports that four days is enough to enjoy its attractions as long as you are not a fan of The White Lotus or work for a morning television show in Spain. “The island that has it all” – this is how traveling influencers promote it on YouTube – is in a state of collapse due to the reporters who, starting today, are reporting on the trial of Daniel Sancho, the grandson of Curro Jiménez, for dismembering the Colombian surgeon Edwin Arrieta.
Events with foreign tourists are the order of the day on the island, but what happened with Sancho is something else. It was the soap opera of the summer and now, having overcome the hangover from the wedding of the year in Madrid – just ask Esperanza Aguirre’s husband –, the TVs are set up in Thailand. 14 oral hearing sessions are scheduled, but the fact that the judge can hand down a sentence mid-trial will keep reporters glued to the island.
The duel is Sancho-Big Joke, the super cop and Buddhist monk, now wanted for corruption, who got a death sentence confession. The journalists will be secondary protagonists: they will have to take off their shoes, wear long pants and their shoulders covered, sit with their hands on their legs and their legs uncrossed. They cannot record images, audio or take notes. So the show has to be manufactured in the arena of social networks. The competition in prime time is fierce and the delight in true crime recalls the worst moments of television in Spain just 30 years after the Alcàsser crimes or the release of the pharmacist M. Àngels Feliu.
We change Tonight we cross the Mississippi on HBO Max, which launches – oh, surprise – a four-chapter documentary. Are true crime documentaries getting out of hand?” asks @xqTTS. “And the trial has not yet ended nor do we know the sentence.” “Soon they will make true crime documentaries before the crime occurs.” So much for the soft comments. Then comes the gore. “There is a lot of meat to cut.” And the implacable: “If you follow the case of Daniel Sancho outside of Spain, he is a person accused of dismembering a man. If you follow the case in Spain, it is the promo of the actor who is going to play Ken in the Spanish version of Barbie. Barbie failed at the Oscars, and Daniel Sancho is risking his life. What was I made for? Sancho only went to Koh Samui to cook, says his lawyer.
