Convicts usually take secrets to their graves, and Rosa Peral and Albert López will probably never reveal the reasons why they killed Pedro Rodríguez. After a very intense trial that led to a sentence of 25 years for her and 20 for him, what is known as the crime of the Urban Guard, committed in 2017, remains unanswered to an essential question: why did they do?
The doubt is projected especially on the Rose. We can understand that compulsive jealousy, the “green-eyed monster” as Shakespeare said, explains what led Albert to the criminal plan. But what about Rosa? She could have left Pedro, no more stories. I had already done it with other couples. Was taking revenge on her ex-husband, Rubén, worth such a risk? What desire was he satisfying by murdering Pedro and, moreover, with the two daughters in the next room?
This week, like many people, I watched (rather devoured) the documentary and the series on Netflix. A first conclusion is that the two tapes respond more to the laws of their audiovisual genre than to the truth. This does not make the two products a real television bomb. It’s not that he doesn’t have anything to say about Feijóo and his failed investiture… It’s just that even Daniel Sancho couldn’t compete, against a Rosa Peral Mata Hari.
Uniforms, sex, blood, boom!
I subscribe to what I read from series critic Alberto Rey. In his opinion, there are three Rosa Perals: the real one, the fictional one, and a third one, more fictional than real, that we had all built together long before we saw El . Perhaps a handful of us who have now recovered this crime have given a verdict based on which of the three Roses we stay with. A frivolity, yes, and what a morbid one. If the three Roses share one thing, it is that she was not a trustworthy person and could do with men what she wanted, without our (moral) rules. Here her sexual promiscuity breaks the classic scheme of morality, in which the man is the villain who deceives and she is Doña Inés hopelessly seduced.
Netflix, of course, has not helped to reveal the unknown that activates the documentary and the series: what was the motive of the crime? In the trial the prosecutor summed it up in one word: evil. Free evil. Which in some people can coexist with kindness so closely that sometimes it cannot be distinguished. This makes me think, not of the Asunta case, which is also the case, but of Estíbaliz Carranza. Do you remember her? The ice cream seller with the face and attitude of an angel who killed two exes, dismembered them and then continued to serve ice cream with her usual kindness. Strawberry, yogurt, pistachio, vanilla, sliced, cone ice creams.
