The first morning without little Iris and Lara

Santiago Escribano had gone to work in the morning on a construction site like any other day when a call has broken his life forever.

His boss responded and on the other side was a supplier of materials: "I am hearing on the news that a civil guard has killed his two daughters in the town."

He couldn't believe it.

Quickly, they got into the car and during the journey, Santiago kept saying: "he has already ridden it".

In just a few minutes they were at the gates of the barracks, located on the outskirts of the Cuenca town of Quintanar del Rey, where their little girls, Lara and Iris, aged 11 and 9, lived with their mother Paola Bufor, a police officer with the one who was in divorce proceedings.

Upon reaching the gates of the complex, hopes that the news had been wrong have been dashed.

It was about them.

Throughout the day, the white door of the Escribano family home has not stopped opening and closing.

The closest relatives and friends have stood tirelessly by the side of a broken parent and grandparents.

"But what has gone through his head?" One of the relatives asked the question at a time when the door was left half open.

No one can understand why Paola has wielded her regulation weapon as an agent of the Civil Guard, she has shot at least two shots at each of her daughters and then committed suicide.

When they found her corpse at seven in the morning, she still had the gun in her hand.

The possibility is being considered that the crime occurred the day before, when she stopped answering the phone, and that she chose a time when there were few people in the barracks.

Health personnel upon arrival at the Civil Guard barracks in Quintanar del Rey (Cuenca).

LOLA PINEDA/EUROPA PRESS (LOLA PINEDA/EUROPA PRESS)

In that house with two floors and yellow tones, the girls spent their days, according to Adela and Diego, neighbors and close relatives of the paternal grandmother.

“They were always here, when she had to work she would bring them here and they were happy here,” the lady commented on the threshold of her house.

In those four walls that have become the family support bunker that supports Santiago, his cousins, uncles and sister focus on the only thing they can do: accompany him.

"The greatest support will be that he is there surrounded by us," says a relative who prefers not to be identified.

This same relative tells that Santiago, 47, and Paola, 42, met more than 12 years ago in the area of ​​Algeciras (Cádiz), where she was originally from and where he ended up for a while to work as a bricklayer after having spent a few years in the Legion.

She had also been in the military and joined the Civil Guard in 2007. They started like any other couple, they met in a bar and, when things got worse, she got transfers to get closer to her partner's town in Cuenca, Quintanar del King.

She was first in Guadalajara and later in Motilla del Palancar, also in Cuenca.

In Quintanar they were married in a wedding to which "no relatives" attended on the part of the bride, say relatives of Santiago.

The two girls were born here and they went to Valdemembra school here,

where teachers have faced a day this Thursday that none would have expected.

That of living together with her students the murder of two classmates at the hands of her mother.

The couple and their daughters lived in a house in the town, until more than a year ago they separated and she went to the barracks with the girls, while Santiago returned to the family home.

At this time, she had provisionally retained custody, since they had not yet reached a divorce agreement.

Some sources explain that she wanted to return to Algeciras with the little ones, while Santiago considered that they had to stay in the town where they were born and raised.

The relationship between them was non-existent, it was the grandparents that Paola left the little ones to.

"Since they separated, he especially cut off all relationships, he did not want it to cause him any problems if they saw each other," says a close friend of her father's family.

Research sources point to revenge against the father by the mother as the main hypothesis.

If confirmed, it would be a new case of vicarious violence, that is, that which is exercised against someone through an intermediary.

“You see these things on TV and you think: how strong that this happens.

Until it's your turn and you realize the pain it entails, ”explains a relative near the Escribano's house, while he smokes a cigarette and breathes air in the dry and cold atmosphere of Cuenca.

It is difficult to find people in the town who can talk about Paola, let alone understand how she could have done something like this.

The civil guard had not shown any type of "abnormal" behavior in recent days, nor are they aware of recent casualties for psychological reasons.

Some of her classmates define her attitude as something "despotic" and people who treated her during her relationship with Santiago explain that she was "introverted."

These same sources assure that she, since her separation, was hardly seen in town, although she had begun a relationship with another neighbor.

Paola was the only woman among Quintanar's civil guards, most of whom live in the barracks where the crime took place.

It has been a colleague who has found the bodies after going to the house, surprised by the fact that the agent had not gone to her workplace.

The guard, which was attached to citizen security, was responsible for processing and responding to complaints of gender violence at the barracks.

Santiago is a bricklayer, although he has also worked sporadically in the fields.

The City Council has called three days of mourning in an extraordinary plenary session called urgently a few hours after the crime.

The Escribano family's mourning has just begun, while questions, anger and pain accumulate in that house where the girls spent their days in the care of their grandparents.

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