The son-in-law of Vicente Sala's widow returns to the bench for his crime

• Courts The 'crime of the Chambers' remains in the hands of the Supreme Court

• Courts Miguel López, from guilty to not guilty in 43 hours

Much to their regret, the Sala family will expose their intimate life again next spring.

The shooting death of the widow of the Alicante businessman

, Mari Carmen Martínez, brought down 40 years of discretion in December 2016 and made public the volcanic disputes that were taking place within the walls for control of the billionaire family

.

Only the courts knew about them.

The trial for the crime that took place on December 9 in the laundry room of one of the family businesses, run by the husband of her youngest daughter, will be repeated in May.

One of Mari Carmen's sons-in-law,

, will then return, three and a half years later, to the bench as the only accused of her murder.

In the trial held in November 2019, a popular jury acquitted him 48 hours after signing a guilty verdict -revealed by this newspaper- that was annulled for lack of reasoning.

Last spring, the

annulled the trial and returned it to the starting box on the understanding that anomalies had occurred.

The magistrate who presided over the jury court did not hold a hearing with the parties to find out the reasons for the return.

In addition, she also did not keep the record of that first guilty verdict, which was destroyed.

López was acquitted but the crime of his mother-in-law lived on in court.

He now faces

The new trial, which will last three weeks, will once again put on the public display that the family unit between the four brothers was faked and that their battle did not start after the murder, although it did intensify.

On one side will be Vicente Sala Jr., the eldest son, the favorite of Mari Carmen.

The deceased thought that he was the only one capable of efficiently continuing the business.

He left the gold share, a privileged share that her husband gave him and that empowered her to make unilateral decisions.

and his aunt

- her aunt Toñi for the family - Mari Carmen's sister, are fully convinced that Miguel López was the person who killed her.

,

and

, her sisters, insist that this accusation is not sustained.

None of them are willing to see it any other way.

Vicente Sala wants Miguel in jail.

His sisters don't.

The murder, the police and judicial investigation and the holding of the hearing attracted not only national but also foreign media.

The misgivings, resentment and discomfort over the desire of Mari Carmen Martínez to leave the flagship of the business -the parent company

, dedicated to plastic- in the hands of her only son had become an unsustainable day-to-day in the family.

"This has not been a thing from one day to the next," Vicente Sala rightly pointed out at trial.

He did it a few meters from her brother-in-law Miguel López, the one accused of killing her in cold blood with two shots.

Throughout that view, the family had to deepen a disagreement that already exceeded all limits.

The golden action

The crime made it emerge that, when Mari Carmen wanted to shield her son and used the gold share to separate her daughters from the company, everything exploded.

That movement, as revealed by the police investigation, meant an explosion of the most primal instincts in the family.

Something, in short, very difficult to digest for Mar, Tania and Fani.

Perhaps also for her husbands because, according to another witness who nurtured the summary, Mari Carmen was convinced that they were managing her daughters, that they themselves would not have taken a path to the brave, since they were going to take her to the courts.

In fact, the day of her murder they were finalizing the lawsuit.

"My nieces did not marry the right husbands," Aunt Toñi said tearfully before the jury.

The situation was so harsh that, as was made clear in the different sessions of the trial,

In January 2016, the widow of Vicente Sala was planning to change the bylaws of the companies to be able to transfer the gold share to her son, since, if they were not modified, she could not do so, and give him all the power in the holding company.

Besides, she had already made him universal heir.

The statutes were not changed because she was assassinated a month before.

Twenty-four hours after the murder, the Police already had their suspect: Miguel López.

The agents considered that the fact of seeing her business sector threatened - in which she earned 100,000 euros a year and that Mari Carmen Martínez considered closing more than once due to losses - and the bad relations with her mother-in-law due to her preferences towards her son major, among other indications, pushed him to kill her.

Paradoxically, Mari Carmen's crime ended the family war for power.

Her children reached an agreement, not without many shocks, but an agreement after all that closed the economic front.

Samar Internacional's main client - the true engine of the family holding, with an annual turnover of close to 260 million euros - did not want scandals.

He wanted to make sure that the business he had with the company was not going to blow up.

He was concerned about the continued presence of the Sala brothers in the press and the cross-lawsuits they maintained.

He asked for guarantees of a smooth future.

Vicente Sala Martínez saw it clearly then and launched an offer to his sisters.

The agreement was closed for more than 50 million euros to be divided between Mar, Tania and Fani Sala, and this package included the family's property company, with properties valued at 35 million euros.

Knowing the Sala-Martínez family through its protagonists would have been unthinkable years ago because they were allergic to ostentation, despite the fact that they were one of the country's fortunes.

On May 3, they will relive the crime that ended up disuniting their members.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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