The life of Dolors Fontarnau and her family changed forever on February 19, 2022. That day, her daughter Cristina Mora lost her life in a traffic accident on the C-62 in the municipality of Olost (Osona), when she was returning to visit his grandparents in Prats de Lluçanés. A drunk and speeding driver took the life of that 28-year-old girl, a future teacher, like her mother.
She combined her studies with one of her passions, artistic gymnastics, which she had practiced since she was a child. She was the sports director of the Associació Esportiva Gimnàstica d’Olot, a club in which she was very loved by the gymnasts she trained, by their families and the other coaches. Cristina made herself loved.
A school cafeteria monitor, she participated whenever she could in extracurricular activities and summer camps and was closely linked to the Unió Excursionista de Vic. Cristina was a very active person with a whole life ahead of her.
Her mother remembers that that fateful day started in the best possible way for her. One of her best friends was getting married and she witnessed a civil ceremony that was held in Sant Sadurní d’Osormort.
She presented the bride and groom with a cake that she prepared herself. “A wedding without a cake is not a wedding…” she remembers she had told him. After the wedding and the required toast, she went home to eat, in the town of La Guixa (Vic), and in the afternoon she decided to go see her grandparents at the residence, just 30 km away, half travel time. She was accompanied by Gil, her partner, who was injured in the accident that Cristina could not avoid.
The offending car, a van driven by a young man who was 23 years old at the time, pounced on him without having room to maneuver to avoid it. The pilot, who was slightly injured, recorded a blood alcohol level of 0.80 milligrams per liter of expired air, a figure three times higher than the permitted level.
At the time of the collision, it was traveling at approximately 140 km/h, in a section with the speed limited to 80 km/h. The police report makes it clear that the victim did not make any incorrect maneuver, that he did not exceed the permitted speed limit nor did he have enough time or space to make an evasive maneuver. Cristina died on the spot. Her partner, who was the co-pilot, was injured and taken to the Vic hospital, where the offending driver was also admitted.
Cristina’s death was just the beginning of a nightmare that two years later has not ended. To date, there is still no date for the trial, a fact that shows the slowness of justice and that prevents the victims, in this case of traffic accidents and their families, from trying to turn the page, if this is the case. possible, of such a tragedy.
“Everything is being very slow and long and more unfair for the victim than the perpetrator,” laments Cristina’s mother, who during these two long years has had to face situations that have only deepened a wound that is impossible to erase. .
Dolors Fontarnau cannot understand how the driver who ended her daughter’s life could already drive the day after the accident. They did not arrest him and they never took his license away. Nor why he couldn’t see or hug his daughter once she was dead. “Absurd and cruel protocols of the administration, they did not allow us,” he says.
He has also had to bite the bullet when those around the young man who will go to trial “spread rumors” blaming his daughter for the accident and his own death “until later the Mossos report silenced them.” The preliminary proceedings are being carried out for an alleged crime of homicide due to recklessness and serious injuries, reckless driving and driving under the influence of alcohol.
The victim’s mother also denounces that the Interior Department took more than a year to calculate the speeds of the two cars, a fact that delayed the judicial deadlines. It was not due to laziness, but rather due to lack of means. In Central Catalonia there is only one expert who does speed studies.
A tortuous path full of thorns that is now pending for the judge to issue the opening order for the oral trial. A lot of time and, at the moment, very little comfort.
