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CRIME

‘I did it for his own good’: Dad who killed baby

A Madrid man wrote a chilling letter before cutting the throat of his 19-month-old baby and seriously injuring his five-year-old son.

'I did it for his own good': Dad who killed baby
When emergency services arrived at the scene, they found the baby to have died from severe blood loss and the older boy to be seriously injured with a knife still stuck in his back. File Photo: Domini

Spanish police have found a note left behind by the father-of-two, Uruguayan national Jorge Diego C.A., in which he explained the reasons for murdering his two children.

“I’ve killed them for their own good, so they don’t suffer like I have and don’t live a life like their mother’s,” Spanish newspaper ABC reported him as writing.

The 32-year-old man went ahead with the crime, cutting the throat of his baby son and stabbing his five-year-old in the back.

Spanish police believe the man intended to commit suicide but may have been interrupted by the children’s mother, who turned up at the scene of the crime after repeatedly calling her husband to no avail.

“How could you have done this? Why would you do it?” one neighbour reportedly heard at around Sunday midnight.

He, along with other local residents, told Spanish daily El País that the couple argued “very often”, leading them to believe that the noises and screams they heard that night were due to yet another family quarrel.

When emergency services arrived at the scene, the baby was found to have died from severe blood loss and the older boy to be seriously injured with a knife still stuck in his back.

The children’s mother, who had recently separated from their father, received medical attention along with her sister, both of whom suffered an anxiety attack.

Spanish police are no looking into whether the man was drunk when he carried out the attacks on his children.

There are also indications he may have regularly beaten his wife. 

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CRIME

Spain investigates letters ordering companies to not hire foreigners

For five years, numerous companies in Spain's northern Navarre region have been receiving e-mails urging them to not hire foreign workers and threatening them with boycotts if not, correspondence that's now being investigated as a hate crime.

Spain investigates letters ordering companies to not hire foreigners

The email address  from which they were sent was always the same, the wording very similar. As far as authorities know, they continued for at least five years between 2017 and 2023.

A court in Pamplona has now taken the matter on and is investigating these e-mails as a possible hate crime.

Some of these e-mails were sent to the director of a residence in Estella/Lizarra in 2020. He received up to 10 of these from the same sender urging him to “nationalise his workforce”.

He publicly denounced the e-mail and released it. The text read: “In the face of possible economic reactivation after the current pandemic, we encourage you to nationalise your workforce; that is, to replace immigrants (including those who are naturalised) with nationals or, if you were to increase the workforce, to hire only nationals. Internally or externally (clients, neighbours, suppliers, etc.) we already know which companies have too many foreigners, and with that information, lists of companies have been made according to sectors so that people know who they employ with their money. Contracting is free, but so is consumption. This is politically incorrect, but not at all illegal. It is simply necessary”.

Many other companies received similar emails around the same time.

In the summer of 2023 the case reached the Racism and Xenophobia Assistance Service (SARX), which decided to carry out an investigation and finally passed it on to the Prosecutor’s Office.

Now, the first Investigative Court of Pamplona is investigating the size and scale of this situation to see how many companies the letters have actually reached.

Johanna Flores, lawyer and coordinator of the Racism and Xenophobia Assistance Service, has emphasised the importance of these e-mails being investigated as a possible crime: “It is very positive because when there is a person who wants to systematically send emails of this kind, they will think twice, since they know that it could have a criminal nature”.

Almost half of all new workers in Navarra in the last year are foreigners, according to 2024 social security figures.

Spain’s National Security Council warned the government about a rise in xenophobia and racist hate crimes back in 2019. There have also been numerous counts of racial discrimination towards prospective tenants and home-buyers. 

In 2023 Real Madrid star Vinicius was racially abused in Spain’s top flight football league. Writing on Instagram, Vinicius said Spain was viewed as “a country of racists” in his homeland.

READ ALSO: The racism problem that has blighted Spanish football

This type of racial abuse is not new in Spanish football.. In 2004, thousands of Spanish fans shouted racial insults at black players during an England-Spain match at the Santiago Bernabéu stadium in Madrid. This prompted outrage in the UK and threatened to escalate into a diplomatic row, with both prime ministers at the time – Tony Blair and José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero – condemning the actions.

Alba García Martín, a member of the anti-racism NGO SOS Racismo has explained: “The immigration law is racist to its core. It does not allow you to regularise your migration status for three years, it pushes immigrants to employment off-the-books and does not provide you any kind of rights as a citizen. All the other racial issues derive from this law. There is no anti-racist legislation, for example, for crimes related to racism. There are no anti-racist laws,” she adds. 

READ MORE: Spain to debate blanket legalisation of its 500,000 undocumented migrants

It’s hoped that if these e-mails are found to be a hate crime, it will set a precedent and stop others from considering these types of attacks in the future.

READ ALSO: ‘Homologación’ – How Spain is ruining the careers of thousands of qualified foreigners

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