The prisoner who preferred to escape instead of seeing the paintings of the Thyssen Museum

Facade of the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, in Madrid. Víctor Lerena (EFE)

Based on his prison record, Adolfo QS, 35, was not a troublesome inmate.

He was admitted to the so-called respect module of the Madrid III Penitentiary Center, in the Madrid town of Valdemoro, a space intended for well-behaved inmates in which they self-manage tasks and, if there is a problem between them, a commission of coexistence does mediation work to try to solve it.

In addition, Adolfo had paid work in one of the prison workshops and had previously enjoyed exit permits without incident.

And yet, last Thursday, taking advantage of an outing with five other inmates to visit the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, this prisoner fled on the run when the tour of the art gallery had not yet begun.

He has not yet been arrested,

The event occurred in the course of what is known as "scheduled exits", specific activities carried out by prisoners outside the prison as part of their reintegration programs.

In which the inmate took advantage to flee, six prisoners participated and were accompanied by two therapists from an NGO that regularly collaborates with Penitentiary Institutions.

On this occasion, no prison surveillance official was present, whose presence, although "recommended" as stated in the internal instruction that governs this type of outing, is not mandatory.

The number of companions also adjusted to what was established: a minimum of two and, at least, one for every four inmates.

Nor was the maximum number of inmates exceeded, which is 10.

After traveling from the prison to Madrid by bus, the inmates and their two companions went from where the vehicle had left them to the museum on foot.

Once there, several prisoners asked to go to the service before starting the visit.

When they finished, the two people who accompanied them realized that Adolfo was missing.

At that moment, they decided to suspend the visit and immediately return to the prison with the rest of the inmates.

The Acaip-UGT union charged in a statement against the management of the penitentiary center, whose dismissal it has demanded in recent months on several occasions.

It is not the first time that prisoners from the Valdemoro prison take advantage of a scheduled exit to escape.

In 2012, two inmates escaped during a visit to the Temple of Debod, also in the capital.

Hours later, one of them was run over when he tried to cross a bypass on foot to go, apparently, to buy drugs in a shanty town.

The second returned voluntarily the next day.

The General Report on Penitentiary Institutions shows that in 2020, the last year for which there are statistics, 560 scheduled exits were carried out in prisons dependent on the Ministry of the Interior (then, all except those in Catalonia) in which 4,530 prisoners participated.

Statistics reveal that this type of activity is used very occasionally to escape.

In fact, most sentence violations occur because inmates choose not to return to prison at the end of a permit.

In 2020, when 62,796 ordinary or extraordinary permits were granted, from which 18,900 inmates benefited, 269 violations occurred.

This represents a percentage of failure of 0.4% of the total.

Precisely in 2020 and in the Valdemoro prison there was one of the few escapes from within a prison that have occurred in Spain in recent years.

On December 5, Jonathan Moñiz Alcaide

and his brother Miguel Ángel, two well-known aluniceros and butroneros (specialized in the robbery in commercial establishments after crashing a vehicle into shop windows or making holes in the walls), escaped from prison and jumped over the walls.

Months later both were arrested again.

Only a few months earlier, in September of that same year, an inmate from the Melilla prison was fleeing after climbing a wall.

Between his escape and his arrest —he was arrested 17 hours later—, the inmate had the opportunity to visit his family and upload videos to social networks in which he bragged about his escape.