Marta

I wanted to share the big news story here. It is very sad, and it was definitely getting me down last week. Soon after I arrived in Sevilla, a seventeen-year-old girl was reported missing. I saw it first on the news, and then saw the “Desaparecida” signs hung all over town. It appeared that she had not run away (she hadn’t taken clothes or money), so it was a mystery. Finally, after a month, her ex-boyfriend confessed to murdering her. Marta’s family reported that the boyfriend was always really aggressive and possessive of Marta, and they suspected him all along. The ex-boyfriend, Miguel, was reported to have said something along the lines of “If I can’t have her then nobody can” and got her to come out one Saturday night. His two friends and him hit her over the head and threw her in the river. It’s so, so sad (I cross that same river every day) and it breaks my heart to see her parents speaking on TV. There was some confusion: I somehow heard that they couldn’t convict the three without the body, even though they confessed. Someone else’s senora said that that was not true (love this game... “but MY senora said...”). It’s crazy that this happened in MY city, and that people I know actually knew her (my former host mother’s niece). There´s an argument for parents: the boyfriend´s mom died when he was three and his dad is an alcoholic. He has been living with the family of his new girlfriend, who is fourteen. Anyway, that’s been on my mind.