Read news from:
Austria
SHARE
COPY LINK

CRIME

Brit expat, 76, arrested for killing girlfriend

A British pensioner has been arrested on suspicion of murdering his companion after her decomposed body was discovered in southern Spain.

Published: 10 March 2015 15:24 CET
Brit expat, 76, arrested for killing girlfriend
The decomposed body of Rosie Webster was discovered on Tuesday. Photo from missing appeal released by family

Rosemary Broadwell, 76, went missing on September 15th in Algorfa, an area on the Costa Blanca near Alicante that is popular with expatriates.

Her companion Charlie Bevill-Warcup reported her missing at the time and an appeal was launched by her family. Her granddaughter Lisa had appealed for information on Twitter.

 

 

"We have only just found out the horrible news," Cheryl Webster, the daughter of the victim, told The Local.

Confirming that Mr Bevill-Warcup was being held for the murder she said: “He lived with her, but he is not my father and was not married to her,” she said. "It’s come as a horrible shock, we are waiting to find out more."

Detectives from the paramilitary Civil Guard at Algorfa arrested Bevill-Warcup last night after he reportedly confessed to killing his partner.

Reports in Spanish newspaper El Mundo said that under questioning on Monday he had told the officers investigating Rosemary's disappearance, that he had beaten her with a blunt instrument.

On Tuesday he took officers to an area of scrubland where her decomposed body was discovered.

A postmortem confirmed that she had been beaten to death.

Bevill-Warcup had reported his partner missing, telling police that she had disappeared after he dropped her off at an ATM at the Ciudad Quesada urbanization near her home.

A missing notice drawn up by her daughter Cheryl described Rosemary – known to her friends as Rosie – as "4 ft 8 inches tall and a fit, well and able-bodied lady".

"Rosie is slim and has short blonde hair with red/purple high-lights. She has a tattoo of a tiny coloured lizard on her foot and another of a dolphin on her right shoulder," the missing notice read.

"Another distinguishing feature is that Rosie always has perfectly manicured finger nails."

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.

Published: 19 September 2024 10:04 CEST
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

SHOW COMMENTS