TILTING AT WINDMILLS: BIZARRE DEATH IN THE TAJO GORGE

Monday, April 13, 2009

BIZARRE DEATH IN THE TAJO GORGE

The official statement is hard to believe but the National Police in Ronda have arrested a 63-year-old woman and her 36-year-old son after his girlfriend fell to her death in Ronda’s Tajo gorge and they did nothing to help her.

The tragedy occurred in the middle of last October but now the police have charged the pair with not helping the woman or seeking help from the emergency services.

The woman fell to her death from the balcony of a property in which she had lived with her boyfriend for several months overlooking the Tajo gorge. According to her partner at around 2.30 in the morning they had a row and she disappeared from the apartment. He heard a bang from the balcony door and went out to find her bag, her shoes and mobile phone but no sign of her.

It is at this point that the story changes from a tragedy to the bizarre. The boyfriend immediately phoned his mother to tell her that he thought his girl friend had fallen in to the gorge. She told him to be calm, to go to bed and sleep. Both seem totally unconcerned about what had happened to the girlfriend. In the morning his mother arrived, cleaned his house, looked down from the windows over the Tajo and almost certainly saw the body of the girlfriend.

They then went shopping and it was only afterwards that they called at the police station to report what had happened. The emergency services then raced to the scene and although they found the girl she had died around eight hours before help was summoned.

Now you or I might shake our heads in astonishment at this tale. But I will tell you for nothing that there isn’t a young Spanish wife or girlfriend with a partner who is a doted-on son who won’t nod their heads in sad understanding.

1 comment:

Andy said...: Unbelievable... and so unnecessary as well. A simple accident after a row, that could have ended well, or at least much better yet they chose to remain silent and allow this poor woman to die.

Stories like this sadden me, and unfortunately reinforce so many of the stereotypes that foreigners have of the Spaniards in whose midst we live, and yet the majority of Spaniards are every bit as sickened as we are.; April 13, 2009 at 12:25 PM

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TILTING AT WINDMILLS

Sancho Panza is much less learned but a good deal saner than his master.

"At this point they came in sight of thirty or forty windmills that are on that plain.

"Fortune," said Don Quixote to his squire, as soon as he had seen them, "is arranging matters for us better than we could have hoped. Look there, friend Sancho Panza, where thirty or more monstrous giants rise up, all of whom I mean to engage in battle and slay, and with whose spoils we shall begin to make our fortunes. For this is righteous warfare, and it is God's good service to sweep so evil a breed from off the face of the earth."

"What giants?" said Sancho Panza.

"Those you see there," answered his master, "with the long arms, and some have them nearly two leagues long."

"Look, your worship,'' said Sancho. "What we see there are not giants but windmills, and what seem to be their arms are the vanes that turned by the wind make the millstone go."

"It is easy to see," replied Don Quixote, "that you are not used to this business of adventures. Those are giants, and if you are afraid, away with you out of here and betake yourself to prayer, while I engage them in fierce and unequal combat."”