...Around midnight, at the ‘Mariscal’ nightclub, located near Calle 2 de Mayo, Cándido Heredia, a well-known drug dealer in the area, is sitting in a corner of the side bar his usual spot sipping a mixed drink.

For quite some time now, he has been keeping a close eye on a beautiful Brunette sitting on a bar stool a few metres from his corner, curiously drinking mineral water, something rarely seen in such places.

The Brunette is a pretty woman with long hair, cut to shoulder length in the ‘Cleopatra’ style; she is wearing a black blouse through which her bra, also black, is visible, clasping her ample breasts.

She is wearing black leather trousers, tight-fitting and accentuating her figure even more.

Heredia has noticed that the woman is keeping an eye on him too, glancing his way from time to time.

He hasn’t quite dared to strike up a conversation with the Brunette; deep down, he is somewhat shy. Although he is a tall man, with short curly hair and an 'Emiliano Zapata', style moustache, his dark complexion reveals his Gypsy origins. To his surprise, the Brunette approaches him...

“If you keep staring at me like that, you’ll wear me out!” are her first words to him.

“It’s just that it’s been ages since I’ve seen a woman like you around here! Usually, the ones who come along aren’t worth it…” and Heredia continues, paying her a compliment: “How do you manage to stay so slender?”

“Doing lots of sport! It burns the fat.”

“Any in particular?” he asks in a provocative tone.

"Lots! But... always with a partner; I don’t like groups, nor do I like doing it on my own." In the same tone.

Heredia can’t believe his luck; the Brunette is hitting on him. He wonders, from experience, where the catch is; and, keen to clear things up, he blurts out:

"Look, if you’re a professional, I don’t go to prostitutes!"

"“Hey mate, you’re a dirty old man!” replies Brunette, offended. Heredia realises he’s just ruined his chance, so he quickly adds:

"Right, sorry! But I’m not used to a girl as hot as you hitting on me.”

“The waiter told me earlier that you’re the one who runs the show round here.”

“Let’s cut to the chase! If all you want is a quickie, fifty euros will sort it out!”

“I always say… ‘Why pay for something you can get for free?’”

“You don’t look like the type to settle for a few measly euros.”

"I’m in the mood for a little party today… while my husband’s away on business, but if you’re going to play hard to get, forget it, I’ll find someone else who’s available!

"No, woman…! If it’s a good time you’re after, I’ve got plenty of that in me! By the way… Let’s go now!" The gypsy ‘dealer’ (Heredia) opts once again to get straight to the point.

"We’ll go in your car; I came here in a taxi." Clarifies the Brunette.

"And where do you reckon we’re going?" He asks. What the “sucker” doesn’t realise is that, without knowing it, he’s about to complicate his life with this woman; who is actually the wife of a notorious “professional” criminal, known as Antonio Pinilla, alias 'The Butcher'.

"To my house! I told you before that my husband’s away; no one will bother us."

"Right then! Shall we go, sweetheart?!"

Once in the car, Heredia tries to 'get a feel' for Brunette. She, whilst removing his hand from her knee, points out:

"I’d rather you didn’t get distracted whilst driving! We don’t want to crash! Be patient; later, at my place, we can play at whatever takes your fancy… given that perverted mind of yours! Ah…! And my name is Ángeles!

“What a lovely, heavenly name!” With that, Heredia complies, and for the rest of the journey, barely speaking, he spends the time imagining the erotic scenes he plans to have with her...

“Turn right at the next street!” Ángeles instructs.

“Is it much further?” asks Heredia, as he turns the steering wheel of his car.

“No! My house is at the end of that roundabout. Don’t be impatient; you’ll soon see all your desires fulfilled…”

The gypsy presses the accelerator to cover the distance separating them from the end of the street as quickly as possible.

“Turn off the engine and don’t make a sound!... I don’t want the neighbours to find out!”

“What a mansion! Your husband must be loaded!” exclaims the unsuspecting ‘dealer’ at the sight.

“I told you not to make a sound. Get out of the car and follow me!”

Heredia does as Brunette (Ángeles) instructs; practically in the dark, they cross a small garden in front of the villa itself; the only light they have is that reflected from the few houses in the vicinity. With great care, they manage to reach the front door of the house, where the woman skilfully pushes him gently inside; taken aback, Heredia, thinking of previous dates, none of which are in the slightest bit like this one, asks Ángeles:

“Do you usually leave the door open?”

"I must have forgotten before, but come in, don’t stand there like a statue… and don’t make a sound!" A way of justifying the state of the door, after which Heredia enters the house… he takes a few steps through a dark hallway, and once inside exclaims:

"I can’t see a thing! Turn on the light, girl!"

“Turn it on yourself, there’s a switch at the end of the hallway! A few steps further on, right in front of you!” the woman tells him.

As Heredia takes those few more steps, he feels a heavy blow to his stomach:

"BLANG…!" a second one on his back a moment later: "PLAAANNNG…!" as if someone had struck him with a bar. Not knowing what is happening, he exclaims:

"What’s going on?! What’s going on?! Help meeee...!"

He cannot finish his cry for help, as another blow:

THUD…!" This time near his neck, causes him to lose consciousness.

…After about thirty minutes, Heredia regains consciousness, he doesn’t know how much time has passed; he sees that he is tightly bound to a chair with a thick rope, and furthermore, each of his wrists is clamped by the cold steel of handcuffs. the sort used by the police, which secure each of his limbs to the armrests of the chair in which he sits, imprisoned. His first reaction is to move both hands to free himself, but it is impossible…

He tries to scream but cannot; that is when he realises he has a rag in his mouth that reaches right down his throat. He wants to spit it out, but is prevented from doing so by adhesive tape securing it to his face.

In front of him are two men and Brunette, the woman who brought him to the house. The silence is broken by the voice of the 'Butcher', the alias by which Antonio Pinilla is known:

"What… you bastard? Did you think you were going to sleep with my woman…? And he continues: "I’m going to cut off your fingers one by one!"

Heredia wonders: “Why?”, he doesn’t know him at all. The 'Butcher' notices his victim’s panic; he relishes seeing his eyes bulge, revelling in it to the point that small drops of semen ooze from his swollen penis, staining his trousers like a blot, the situation excites him. “You’re here to receive a gift from ‘Bartolomé Colón’, you bastard!” Yes… that one, the one you owe a lot of money to! Do you know who I’m talking about, you bastard? This is nothing compared to what I’ll do to that son of a bitch! For now, you’ll serve as my outlet to get even with that bastard…!

Heredia writhes in his chair, trying in vain to free himself from it; the restraints prevent him from moving, and he pays no heed to his tormentor’s curses. Nor, of course, does he realise that they are directed at Diego, a man who, before these events unfolded, had dared to ‘flirt’ with his wife, Brunette; and we shall later learn how this altercation came about.

But back to the present; the 'Butcher' continues with his task:

"Paco, hold this son of a bitch down; I’m going to cut off his fingers! He orders his brother, who is also part of this peculiar and bloody team. At which point Paco Pinilla holds the diabolical chair down with all his might. Ángeles keeps her distance.

 From a corner of the living room, the 'Butcher' grabs an electric saw, taking advantage of the fact that the villa has electricity, and switches it on. It is his favourite tool, the one he enjoys using most...

"RAMMM, RUMMM, RUUUM!" Without further ado, he directs the blade of the saw towards the fingers of Heredia’s right hand, and as if he were dealing with an animal in a slaughterhouse, he saws off the fingers of his hand one by one, without flinching in the slightest and with great precision:

"RAAASSS, RUMMM, RAAASSS, RUMMM, RAMMM…!" Blood gushes from the unfortunate man’s hand.

Heredia feels the cold steel, writhing in pain; he has never felt anything like it before. His brain tries to send signals to make him faint; he cannot bear the pain. The ‘Butcher’, like a true professional and living up to his nickname, begins a “lapsus” upon finishing cutting off the five fingers of the unfortunate Heredia’s hand.

"Does it hurt, you bastard? Can you feel the cold? Can you feel your fingers coming off? Now I’ll cut off the ones on your other hand! When they find you, they won’t be able to recognise you!"

"RAAASSS, RUMMM, RAAASSS, RUMMM, RAMMM…!" Which he does with the cold-bloodedness of a murderer who takes pleasure in inflicting pain and watching his victim suffer. All the while, his penis continues to expel small drops of semen. He cuts off the fingers of his other hand in the same manner.

The gypsy still wants to pass out so he won’t have to suffer any more, but he can’t. The pain makes him shit himself…; then, in another reflex action, he wets himself; the rag stuffed down his throat chokes him at times.

The ‘Butcher’, watching his wife Ángeles, asks her and replies:

"Didn’t you want to fuck my wife?... Well, go on and fuck her now, you bastard…!"

Meanwhile, blood continues to gush from the wretch’s hands. The ‘Butcher’ drops the saw on the floor, picks up a cheap brown cloth sack, the sort used by the ‘farmers’ living in ‘Sa Pobla’, a region on the island of Mallorca, to fill with potatoes. And he places it over Heredia’s head. And once again, with his saw in his hands...:

“Step back, you let go of the chair, or I’ll cover you in blood!” The assistants at the makeshift butcher’s shop obey him. The ‘Butcher’ directs the saw towards the neck, and with a swift movement cuts his victim’s neck in just 3 seconds; the bones offer very little resistance, as he knows exactly which vertebrae to cut between:

"RAAASSS!, RUMMM, RAMMM…! RAMMM…!"

The head falls into the sack that now contains it.

From the rest of the body, through the little neck that remains, a huge jet of blood spurts out towards the ceiling of the room. The ‘Butcher’ cannot prevent a large amount of blood from the rest of the decapitated body from splattering him; until now, the two brothers had only received a few splashes.

“This bastard’s covered me in blood!” curses the 'Executioner'. “Come on, don’t just stand there! Ángeles, get in the shower and get some clean clothes ready!

“And you, pick up the sack with the head! And put this bastard’s fingers in my bag!” the 'Butcher' usually keeps his victims’ fingers in a climate controlled bag, which he then stores 'half dried' in a chest, like 'trophies'.

But at that moment, the decapitated body of the 'dealer', still slumped in the chair, jerks suddenly.

“Bloody hell, he’s alive!” exclaims the assistant, Paco Pinilla.

“No, you idiot! It’s a reflex; they all do it…” his brother, the 'Butcher', clarifies. “Get it over with! This is nothing compared to what I’ll do to that bastard!” Referring once again to Diego, he is obsessed with this man; it’s very typical of him to become “blinded” by someone who stands up to him…

However, little does the 'Butcher' realise that fate will bring the four of them together again in the not too distant future, and that his desire to end Diego’s life might just be fulfilled…

But having reached this point, and to understand what happened between them, let’s rewind 48 hours; and find out how and when these two characters: Antonio Pinilla’s 'Butcher' and the journalist Diego Torres, met. But first, we’ll have to meet his friend Javier.... To do so, we need to REWIND...

poner coordenadas

para recibir texto...

The first “Seat 600” to roll off the assembly line at the “Zona Franca” in Barcelona did so on 27 June 1957.

And when production ceased on 3 August 1973, after 16 years, a total of 799,419 units had rolled off the production line; it had become the most popular utility vehicle ever built in Spain.

The “600” was the Spanish version of the original “Fiat 600” model and was the result of an agreement between “SEAT” and the Italian car manufacturer “FIAT”.

It weighed 600 kilos and was built from sturdy materials. Despite its compact size, it had four seats so that the whole family could travel in it.

This painting by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, produced between 1893 and 1894 and entitled ‘A Woman Breastfeeding Her Baby’, helps to set the scene.

"…And since his ex-wife had no objections to ‘Tomeu’ acknowledging our son, the priest had no qualms about writing the letter." That’s how Margarita wrapped up the news on the matter; my mother was already up to speed:

"Well, as I said, congratulations! And since you’ve become an expert at registering children, will you take care of registering Antoñito’s birth?"

"Of course, count on it!" Margarita accepted the task.

“You’ll have to sort it out with Laura so she can give you the Birth Certificate. We agreed that the midwife who attended the birth would sign it. I suppose she’ll have it in a few days.”

“Don’t worry about it. I’ll speak to her and take care of submitting it to the Registry. I’ll make a note of some details for the form now, and when I’ve got everything, I’ll submit it.”

“Won’t you need me to sign the application?”

“I’ll just scribble something down myself!”

And she was the one to blame, yes, the one to blame!, for not knowing the exact date of my birth. It seems not everything went to plan, and in the end, when Margarita submitted the application for registration at the Registry Office, the clerk at the relevant counter pointed out that the application had been submitted after the deadline for registration.

This consequently led to a fine; I don’t know how much the penalty was, but it was enough for Margarita to shrewdly improvise the following:

"And what date have I put for the birth?"

"It says the 18th here. What’s the matter? Don’t you remember when he was born?"

"Of course I do! It’s just that there’s so much to fill in, I got confused!" Her mental calculator quickly did the maths and she worked out which date to put so as not to pay any fine. "It was the 21st!"

"If you put the 20th, that’s still within the deadline," too, said the official, who had realised the deception; she wasn’t the first person to resort to a ruse to avoid paying the fine, and Margarita went along with the lie.

"Oh, how kind of you! Right then, let’s put the 20th."

The pen-pusher, without replying, corrected the date on the form and, with a stroke of his pen, turned the 18th into a 20th, so that I would never again know the exact day I was born; just like a plot from a novel by my admired ‘master’ Charles Dickens.

"Here you are, this is your copy!"

"Thank you very much! I don’t know why you civil servants have such a bad reputation?"

"And I least of all! I suppose there’s a bit of everything in God’s vineyard. Most of us here are just hard workers! And like everyone else, we earn our keep as best we can… Well, off you go, God be with you!"

…But I must return to when my mother and the “forger” were having their hot chocolate:

"DING, DONG!"

"Who could it be? The door’s open, why are they ringing?"

"I’ll get it, Antoñita, and I’ll make of this a chance to leave."

"But you’ve hardly spent any time with the baby!"

"There’ll be time later; besides, I’m sure he’s fed up with people picking him up."

Margarita didn’t realise it, but when she went out she bumped into the new visitor, who announced her arrival by asking after the new mother.

"Where are you, Antoñita?" Without addressing Margarita, who had come out to greet her, as if she didn’t exist. Faced with this attitude, the 'forger' didn’t answer her either; they hadn’t spoken for years. The handover took place without further ado; one went in and the other went out. My mother, upon hearing the voice, recognised her before she saw her:

“Come in, Josefina, we’re here!”

“May I come in?” she asked again for permission to enter; her visit was somewhat unexpected. She didn’t usually have such a friendly rapport with her tenants.

“Of course, dear, and thank you for coming!”

“You know I’m not a very expressive woman,” she said apologetically.

“To each their own! Come closer and hold the baby, look at that flat little nose!”

Very gently, she took me in her arms and said what was obvious:

“How handsome! How I would have loved to give birth to a baby!”

My mother didn’t respond to the woman’s slip of the tongue; the woman turned as red as a tomato, her open secret coming to light once more. She wasn’t the biological mother of her only son; naturally, I didn’t find out about her secret, though I would later learn all the details of the birth of her son Vicente.

“Fancy a cup of hot chocolate?”

“Well, don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m more of a herbal tea person! And I’ve already had a cup of chamomile tea before coming up, so thanks anyway. But just so you don’t get upset, I’ll take a cup for my son Vicente.”

But as she was a very introverted woman, she was annoyed that I’d mentioned her son’s birth; she didn’t want my mother to take the opportunity to pry for more information, when in fact she hadn’t mentioned it at all.

So she decided to change the subject and quickly let her ‘sour’ side show:

‘You know you don’t need to worry, even if there’s one more of you! I’ll keep the rent the same for you.

As if the rent had anything to do with who lived there; perhaps that shrew thought it did. My mother didn’t reply; she simply stood up and placed the dose for her eldest son in a container ‘from Huelva’ (not referring to the province, but indicating it must be returned), and handed it to her. Suddenly the landlady was in a hurry:

"I’ll leave you to it! I won’t bother you any more; you must be tired of so many visitors." And she left; they said their goodbyes politely.

The next people to walk through the door of our house were women again.

It must have been around eleven o’clock in the morning; one was a familiar face, Laura, who had helped her during the birth; the other two were known to my mother only by sight.

The three of them entered the living-dining room; my mother had moved chairs and was sitting in the rocking chair, holding her newborn in her arms.

“When she saw them, she made a move to get up, but Laura immediately said to her:

‘No, Antoñita, don’t get up! These are my neighbours, Eladia and Vanessa; they’re Belgian. Well, actually, Eladia is Spanish.’”

Photograph of ‘Laika’ before her flight