A court determined that the chapel built in honor of the Escorial visionary was irregular, but that the two municipal officials at Madrid City Hall should not be condemned for malpractice. The Provincial Court, as elDiario.es learned, annulled the four and a half month prison sentences handed down against a municipal architect and a town hall department head, considering that “they acted in good faith” in authorizing pre-trial detention. the chapel, already demolished, was built with an irregular permit. He also confirmed the absolution of the nuns of the congregation.
This is the latest legal chapter in the story of Luz Amparo Cuevas, the woman who claimed for decades to have been in contact with the Virgin of Sorrows since her first apparition in 1981. These alleged apparitions ended up bringing together hundreds of people every month at the Prado Nuevo farm in the mountains of Madrid until his death in the summer of 2012. It was then that the congregation decided to build a chapel in his honor, as the Virgin would have ordered during one of his many calls to Earth.
Justice has already determined, for contentious and administrative reasons, that the chapel had been constructed in an irregular manner. Madrid courts determined almost a decade ago that the provisional authorization that the Escorial council granted to the Seglares Reparadoras to build the place of worship was illegal because that land was protected and undevelopable. The case led to criminal proceedings when the Association of Victims of these alleged apparitions filed a complaint against the municipal permit holders as well as the nuns.
The first sentence in the case, handed down by a criminal court in Madrid, understood that the Seglares Reparadoras had no responsibility but understood that a municipal architect and a sector head of the municipality had procrastinated because they knew that this what they were doing was blatantly illegal, even after being warned by the Community of Madrid against granting this license. Now the Provincial Court has revoked that sentence and acquitted both men, knowing that although the license was irregular, there is no evidence that they transgressed.
The judges do not dispute that the permit, as the contentious-administrative courts said, was irregular. “The illegality of the license is not debatable,” they recall. But they consider that there are doubts about the fact that the two municipal employees granted it “knowingly” and acting on a “whim”.
The Madrid court concludes that they acted “in good faith” and sought “a proportionate solution” to the problem faced by the town hall of this town northwest of Madrid: a “constant pilgrimage” of people to visit the self-proclaimed medium and “concentrations” of hundreds of people every few days. No one “opposed” this license, their reports were “transparent” and there is no evidence that the technicians of the Community of Madrid were “clear” in warning them against granting it, as the first sentence says who condemns them.
The first judgment finding the administrative irregularity of the license was handed down in 2016. The chapel was only demolished in 2020. Today, the Madrid court emphasizes that the construction “was easily dismantled in a short time », only four days according to a witness, and that “no damage was caused to the environment”. “It is not proven that damage, much less irreversible, was caused to the plant cover or other contested protection values on the land on which the church was built,” the court decides.
Maintains the absolution of nuns
Faced with this reasonable doubt, the court withdraws the prevarication sentences of four and a half months in prison against the municipal architect and the sector head of the town hall of El Escorial, and also rejects the appeal with which the Association of Victims of the Apparitions, The prosecution that promoted the case requested the revocation of the acquittal of the Seglares Reparadoras, who also sat in the dock in 2023. The prosecution had requested to confirm the previous conviction.
The court explains that it is not possible to reexamine the evidence to revoke an acquittal like the one pronounced by the criminal court against the nuns worshiping the Virgin and the alleged clairvoyant. The resolution is still subject to appeal to the Criminal Chamber of the Supreme Court.
This association denounces that the congregation not only committed crimes during the construction of the already demolished chapel, but also acted like a “sect” and targeted those it considers to be “the accomplices of a vulgar medium and of his hallucinations.
Other criminal convictions have focused on collateral aspects of the conspiracy behind the alleged apparitions. In March 2023, the Supreme Court confirmed the sentence of more than four years in prison handed down to the head of a foundation linked to these false appearances, for having avoided paying corporate tax for years.
