A judge in Valls (Tarragona) sent to temporary prison the man detained by the Mossos d’Esquadra due to the death and hiding of the body of his partner in July 2022 in the Sierra del Montsant.
As reported by the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC), the file is open for the crimes of homicide, concealment of a corpse and physical and psychological abuse.
The Mossos d’Esquadra arrested the 53-year-old man in Barcelona on Tuesday as the alleged perpetrator of the violent death of his partner and the subsequent concealment of her body, still awaiting location.
Catalan police began their investigation in August 2022, when the family of the woman, aged 44 and residing in Morera de Montsant, in the Priorat region, reported her disappearance. From the start, the Mossos stressed that it was a criminal disappearance.
During nearly two years of investigation, the Mossos strived to find “as much evidence as possible”, as the regional police explained in a press release. Officers tracked mobile phone data in the area until ‘breaking the alibi’ maintained by the missing woman’s partner.
According to the Mossos, throughout the investigation “contradictions were dismantled” about the man who ended up in prison and “relevant clues” to the investigation also emerged, such as the fact that the arrested man kept the woman’s belongings for months after her arrest. . disappearance and that “in a normal context the victim would not have given up”.
The investigation remains open and the Mossos are now working to obtain more information that will allow them to locate the victim’s body. If the sexist murder is confirmed, the number of women murdered by gender violence in Spain in 2022 would reach 50.
016 assists all victims of gender-based violence 24 hours a day and in 53 different languages, as does the email 016-online@igualdad.gob.es; Attention is also provided via WhatsApp at the number 600000016, and minors can contact the ANAR Foundation telephone number 900 20 20 10.
In case of emergency you can call the Mossos d’Esquadra at 112 or the telephone numbers of the National Police (091) and the Civil Guard (062) and if you cannot call you can use the application ALERTCOPS, from which an alert signal is sent to the Police with geolocation.
