Tabernacle Ortega |
Madrid (EFE).- 2003 was a black year in the Community of Madrid. One hundred murders were committed, six of them attributed to Alfredo Galán, the murderer of the deck. Twenty years later, Netflix premieres next Friday a documentary series about a man who perpetrated his crimes to prove to himself that killing was easy.
It is about “Baraja: the signature of a murderer”, a docuseries that aims to portray in three episodes a time, that of the beginning of the new millennium, in which citizen insecurity dominated the top positions among the greatest citizen concerns and in which morning television programs -as is also the case now- attracted the audience with “new chapters” of the most media events.
Directed by Amanda Sans Pantling and produced by Cuarzo Producciones, the series also shows police bewilderment in the face of a series of murders that had nothing in common, no “leading thread” that led investigators to a perpetrator or, of course, to a Motive that led the murderer to unlock several shots to the head of his victims, as disparate as the places where he “executed” them.
Perhaps Galán only had one motive: to kill for the sake of killing. Or prove to himself that killing could be easy, as he declared at the Puertollano (Ciudad Real) police station when five and a half months after his first crime he turned himself in, right in the town where he lived.
Sentenced to 142 years in prison for six murders and three attempts -he will only serve 25, the maximum set by the sentence-, Alfredo Galán will be released in 2028, but he will continue to appear on the list of serial killers in Spain, rubbing shoulders with names like Manuel Delgado Villegas “El Arropiero” or José Antonio Rodríguez Vega “El Mataviejas”. Saving the distances, of course, because these far exceeded him in number of crimes.
“As we let him, he reaches the King of Cups”
This phrase is pronounced by one of the forensic experts in statements made in his day and that the documentary series has rescued. It is nothing more than a sample of the social alarm that Alfredo Galán had created in a society, Madrid, which in the first months of the year had already counted up to thirty murders in the region.
An alarm that grew when at the scene of one of the murders, committed on February 5, 2003, a card appeared, the Ace of Cups. Was it chance that brought the letter to the bus stop where Galán shot Juan Carlos Martín, a young employee at the Barajas airport?
Galán – it was learned later – had already killed a doorman on Alonso Cano street ten days before. But in that scenario there was no playing card, nor in the Rojas bar in Alcalá de Henares where hours after the murder of Juan Carlos Martín he killed a young man, he seriously injured his mother and ended the life of a client of the establishment.
Today on social networks the Ace of Cups would have been a “trending topic”. That year was also his way. Because the truth is that after the name and image of that card circulated throughout the media, Alfredo Galán left three consecutive cards of that suit in his following crimes -the two of cups, the three and the four- , this time marked with a blue dot on the back.
Two robot portraits and only one clue: The weapon
The series that Netflix premieres on Friday takes a tour of the investigation of the crimes, not without difficulties and even political pressure in the face of the imminence of the municipal and regional elections on May 25. The so-called card murderer had to be stopped.
Social alarm and political pressure seasoned with countless speculations about the profile of the alleged author, of whom two very different robot portraits were made, which also reflected the police confusion.
And the docuseries also opens the debate that took place in its day about authorship. Did one person commit the crimes? Was some ultra group behind them?
While the speculation was unleashed, the journalists of the black chronicle of Madrid, as reflected in the series, faced the coverage of their biggest event, the one that kept all the unknowns open despite the passing of days.
In turn, the security forces strove to obtain evidence – some of them were taken away with the hose and water by the municipal cleaning services – and they obtained the only one that could fit all the pieces: the weapon.
In short, you can see three episodes in which the victims of Alfredo Galán are given a voice. The ones he didn’t manage to kill despite shooting them and those closest to those he shot.