At number 2 Calle Claveles, in Miranda de Ebro (Burgos, 35,000 inhabitants), there are few clues about its occupants beyond the name that appears on the mailbox.
This indicated that Pompeyo GP, a 74-year-old retiree who had worked in the Vitoria City Council, lived in 3º C. There he was a “lonely, but calm, formal and polite” neighbor until that Wednesday.
The extensive police deployment this Wednesday to arrest him has been quite a surprise, especially when the reason was known: he is the alleged author of the shipment, between November and December, of six letters with a pyrotechnic device to the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, the ambassador of Ukraine and four other recipients.
The neighbors do not give credit.
Pompeyo never gave any hint of his support for "that Putin," says Elisa Rojas, 84, a tenant of the house smaller than the man's.
"I'll call you later, Mariángeles!", he interrupted his telephone interlocutor, before describing that the closest thing to a strange noise he ever heard was "the sound of a fork or knife falling" within the usual silence of a house in which the man lived alone and with hardly any visitors.
The news has revolutionized the block.
“I didn't think that a 74-year-old person could do something like that.
All of Spain is against Putin and he is in favor of it”, questions the woman.
She never detected any symbols that could throw clues to Pompey, that he was short, thin, wore glasses and covered his gray hair with a cap.
His balcony had no flags or anything identifying it.
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A 74-year-old man was arrested in Miranda de Ebro for sending letters with pyrotechnic material to Sánchez and the Ukrainian Embassy
The married couple of Fina Antillera and Carlos García, aged 85 and 83, open their door protected by two separate dressing gowns to explain that with him they talked about "the typical": if it's hot, if it's cold, yes hello, yes bye.
Nondescript conversations with someone who has turned out to be anything but nondescript.
"Frog has come out", settles the lady on that "formal" individual whose arrest has left them "in stone".
González had owned the apartment for 16 years, they calculate, in a building with a lot of rented and empty housing.
While the others lived quietly, he made homemade artifacts.
The theme encourages conversations on the landing like the ones that Jacinto Sáez, also 74, longs for, which he evokes when he talked to the neighbors for something more than to ask for salt.
He laments that in these times of "everyone going their own way" nothing is known about those with whom he lives.
“If I have a bomb, nobody finds out!”, he exemplifies before Verónica Caballero, 30, who raises her eyebrows a little because the day is not for black humor.
"We've been here for three months and it's already the most famous portal in Spain," sighed the young woman, who, when she returned from work, found dozens of policemen who accompanied her to her door and after a while took out multiple boxes before putting the defendant in. the patrol car.
"You are amazed by these things," says Caballero,
while Sáez is suspicious that "there is a lot of damage, this is to have gone up in the air."
At least on the second floor there is a fire extinguisher.
Few people beyond number 2 on the street talk about it, which was lavished little in the nearby bars.
Víctor Berrueco, who runs the Biosfera bar, walks his dogs on the cold sidewalks near the area and points out that the arrested man "drank some wine or must from time to time."
From his attitude, he highlights that he "was a sullen person, he was always running everywhere."
Letter that included an explosive device addressed to the Ukrainian ambassador in Spain.
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