The photography says it all. A window from which a long rope made by braiding sheets and garbage bags descends. It is the emblematic image of an escape, the one carried out, last Saturday night, by two inmates of Spanish nationality and imprisoned for crimes of robbery with violence and intimidation, in . The escape has the most cinematic elements of an escape, according to the data known so far. Before climbing down the improvised rope, the inmates managed to force the bar of a window and, after reaching one of the patios, circumvent the security measures to reach the gate through which the goods enter the prison and force it to finish. his escape. The passive security systems did not detect them and only when on a night patrol they saw that this exit to the outside was open, did the officials discover that the two inmates were not in their position. Penitentiary Institutions have already opened prior information [investigación interna] to find out what happened and, to do so, a team has been sent from the General Secretariat to Madrid. So far, the two prisoners have not been located.
According to the first reconstruction of the escape, the two inmates managed to leave their cells between 9:00 p.m., when a count was carried out in which both were still in their cell, and 11:00 p.m., the hours of the first night security patrol. After forcing the bars of a window using leverage with a bar, they lowered themselves towards the patio with the handmade rope in the image, as confirmed by prison sources. These same sources highlight that the existence of this handmade rope reveals prior preparation, since the inmates had to distract both sheets and garbage bags without being discovered in order to braid it. Once in the patio, both went to the gate through which the goods enter the penitentiary center and, after forcing it, they left the premises. His exit was not detected by the Civil Guard troops guarding the premises or by the passive security systems. Penitentiary sources point out that the prisoners were able to take advantage on Saturday night of the commotion that usually occurs in the prison when the inmates follow from their cells on the radio a prominent soccer match, such as the one played just at that time by FC Barcelona and Atlético de Madrid, to escape without the noise they caused when forcing the bar to reveal them.
The escape of both inmates is similar to , and his brother Miguel Ángel, from the Valdemoro prison (Madrid). That escape had a long preparation process in which the inmates made a key to enter a storage room, where they patiently sawed the bars of the window. After managing to overcome the walls and fences of the enclosure with the help, precisely, of a rope made with sheets and braided plastic bags and a pole. The investigations carried out by both Penitentiary Institutions and the Civil Guard, responsible for perimeter security, then revealed a chain of human errors resulting from “overconfidence” on the part of officials and agents. In fact, the alarms rang for 16 minutes without anyone coming to check the reason for their activation. The Moñiz brothers were arrested separately months later.
Nine days after that escape, so that they could review the prison security systems and make sure that the measures contemplated in the protocols to prevent escapes were correctly applied. In that document, Fernando Grande-Marlaska’s department emphasized carrying out “every Wednesday […] a thorough and detailed check” of all the passive (walls, fences, gates and concertina wires, among others) and active (video surveillance camera circuit, volumetric sensors, infrared barriers, lighting…) security means of the premises. In addition, he reminded the prison directors that they had to “dispatch daily” with the head of the center’s external security, the responsibility of the State Security Forces, to coordinate the work of the agents with that of the officials, as well as to “establish guidelines for the periodic review” of security measures to detect possible “deficiencies.”
With this double escape, there are now 24 the number of escapees from Spanish prisons since 2003, according to the official statistics of Penitentiary Institutions. This number of escapees represents a minimal part of the breaches of sentence recorded in the last two decades – more than 10,000, according to an estimate by this newspaper based on various parliamentary responses from the Government. Three quarters of this figure was carried out by inmates who took advantage of their leave to avoid returning to prison. Another part occurred during inmates’ departures to go to court, when they were admitted to hospitals or when carrying out a cultural activity outside the prison. The prison population in Spain was 59,513 people at the end of November, although around 80,000 pass through them at some point each year, according to prison sources.
The last escape before Picassent’s was carried out a year ago, on December 23, 2023, by Yousef Mohamed Lehrech, alias The Pastillaa young man accused of having committed two murders who was held in the Alcalá-Meco prison (Madrid). His escape was less cinematic. During the visit of some relatives, he took advantage of the fact that a portcullis (double bar door system that separates rooms) was ajar and a succession of negligence on the part of the center’s staff to walk calmly out of the main door of the prison. Was .
