This article was originally published in May 2009 and is visible now so that readers can look at what was happening on the Costa Tropical back then.

An incident unfolded on Thursday 23rd April while Alicia, a 35-year-old local woman was working at her cleaning job in the offices of Centro Jate de La Herradura, (underneath the Municipal Market).

Unknown to Alicia her ex-partner, 55-year-old Cecilio, had secreted a bag with parcel tape and petrol near the door of the building earlier. He confronted her in the building and an argument ensued.

“We have not been together for over 2 years,” explained Alicia, “We had remained friends since the break-up and we sometimes go for a coffee together. He has been a friend of our family since I was a child.”

Alicia went on to explain how the next 2 hours became a nightmare, during which he tied her up with tape, sat her in a chair, put piles of paper around her, then covered her in petrol and stood over her with a lighter.

She continued, “He kept saying how he was going to kill me, take me into the countryside, then kill himself so we could be together forever, and when I tried to talk some sense into him, he hit me in the head with an iron bar, there was a lot of blood. All the time I was looking at the door, hoping that Rafael, who sometimes does work at the centre, would come in and save me.”

Covered in blood, in pain and bound, Alicia, in an incredible moment of clarity in what must have been traumatic in the extreme, decided to play along in the hope of at least getting out of the centre alive.
“I agreed to go with him wherever he wanted and to do whatever he wanted, in the hope that I could throw myself from the car on the way,” she explained.

Obviously thinking it would be easier to kill her in the countryside, and believing she now wanted the same outcome as him, he dragged her into the street, and by an amazing stroke of luck, one of Alicia’s cousins was walking past the centre. Realising this was her last chance of salvation, she screamed to her cousin for help. Cecilio panicked when he realised the cousin was going to intervene and jumped in his car and drove off.

Cecilio then drove north from La Herradura, into the campo, abandoned his car in a quiet area, then walked quite a distance from the vehicle to ensure he wouldn’t be found, and placed 2 plastic crates under an olive tree, secured a rope to the tree and hung himself.

He had vowed that Alicia would be with him, or nobody, but thanks to her quick thinking under extreme duress, she managed to save her own life, and although she had to have several stitches in her head injury, the mental scars left by her 2-hour ordeal will take longer to heal.

(News: Herradura, Costa Tropical, Granada, Andalucia)