A minibus parks in front of a townhouse in the Madrid municipality of Colmenar Viejo.
The house is easy to recognize because a leafy tree with pink flowers covers part of the façade.
It is Wednesday, March 29, and there are only a few days left before the start of the Easter holidays.
Eight children between the ages of 4 and 14 are getting into the vehicle.
The little ones are excited by the new experience, it is the first time that they are going to get on a bus like this with their brothers.
They take it as a kind of excursion and some start to sing.
His parents, however, take a different path.
They have just been arrested for the "mistreatment" and "abandonment", in the words of the Civil Guard, of their numerous offspring.
The residents of this nondescript urbanization of a town on the outskirts of the capital look at the house in amazement a few days later,
A few days before the scene of the chants on the bus, the entourage of one of the oldest daughters had informed the Civil Guard that something was wrong in that house.
The story was coherent and the agents also verified that there was already a previous complaint against the father of this large family, which at the time did not go ahead.
It is not known if no evidence was found to continue the investigation or if he eventually withdrew.
In the days that followed, everything developed very quickly.
The investigators and the Prosecutor's Office believed they had sufficient evidence that demonstrated the conditions of abandonment and violence in which the eight minors lived.
But they never imagined what they found once the head of the Investigating Court number 1 gave permission for the entry and search of the townhouse.
"There was extreme dirt, especially in the kitchen and one of the bathrooms, everything thrown everywhere, and the children were very disheveled," describes a source close to the case.
Disorder reigned throughout the house, except in one very specific point, the office of the head of the family, a doctor at the Gregorio Marañón hospital in Madrid.
“He was spotless, totally clean.
A tremendous contrast with the rest of the house”, emphasizes this same source.
The townhouse has two outdoor areas, one at the entrance and another at the rear.
In the first, there is still a large amount of clothing, especially children's, hanging from two clotheslines and also stuffed into bags.
In the backyard, several bikes and scooters, helmets, strollers, and a basket.
Among all the toys, a carton of milk peeks out.
from doors to outside,
a chaos that is not strange in a house where eight children under 14 live.
The extent of what was going on inside has only now been known.
“The police have come several times at night due to the noises, shouts and blows that were heard.
We are several neighbors who have called.
But they just came and told them not to make noise.
I know the names of all the children from so much that we have heard them scream.
We also saw very young children leaning out of the window with half their bodies outside and sometimes they would stay playing in the patio at dawn”, admits a resident of the area.
"I'm surprised what they found inside, but not that they found anything," he adds.
Since that March 29, the hubbub has given way to a deathly silence and the blinds remain completely lowered.
“I have hardly ever seen them uploaded, that is the truth”, completes this neighbor.
When the little ones were taken to a center supervised by the Community of Madrid, the first days they were reluctant to talk.
But little by little they opened up and put an account of the days among the filth that the Civil Guard cameras portrayed in that house.
"They have explained that when the father got angry, he put them all in a kind of semi-basement and there they remained for hours in which the older ones acted as mothers of the little ones," explains a source from the investigation.
The investigations indicate until now that it was the father who kept the family subject and that the woman acted under his orders.
At the request of the Prosecutor's Office, the judge has imposed a restraining order from the parents with respect to the children, but also from the father towards the mother, considering that she is a victim of ill-treatment.
Front entrance of the home of the couple arrested for mistreatment and abandonment of their eight children, in Colmenar Viejo. VICTOR LERENA (EFE)
This case has caught many of the neighbors enjoying their Easter holidays, but those who remain in the area look, some with more and others with less concealment, at the house of the "neighbor doctor with many children."
They almost never saw him, most say.
Almost all describe the single mother with the crowd of children on their way to school, a few minutes from home, or to the gym for swimming lessons.
On these journeys, the older ones helped with the little ones.
One of the residents remembers that the first time she saw them on the street and introduced himself as her new neighbor, she was defensive, thinking that she was talking to him to complain about the noise in her house.
Those are the few details that the tenants of these rows of townhouses, without community spaces and with interior patios separated by gates,
they can give
Most did not even know their names.
At the house, the agents ran into another surprise.
The man stored hundreds of medical devices such as gauze, gloves, masks, gowns, and operating room clothing.
When the civil guards questioned him about it, he did not give any coherent explanation, so it is suspected that he took them from the center where he practices and where he has continued to work after his arrest and subsequent release.
In addition to the public hospital where he works as guards, he has also worked in private practices for at least two companies.
Sources close to his environment emphasize that he always lamented that he did not make ends meet "with only one salary and so many children."
The investigators also verified that the children often missed class with the medical records issued by the father, the Civil Guard points out.
Both parents were released considering that there was no risk of flight, of continuing to harm their children, or of eliminating evidence.
The children will remain in the custody of the Community of Madrid on a provisional basis, until the parents are tried.
On the table, there are many questions and reflections on a situation that for years has remained hidden behind lowered blinds and closed doors.
Subscribe here
to our daily newsletter about Madrid.
