February 9th, 2010 marked the first anniversary of ‘the Santaló case’, as it came to be called. It was the most sensational Barcelona contract killing in recent memory, and immediately fuelled speculation about the victim’s ties to shady underworld figures. Rumours of ‘mafia connections’ began to circulate as police began to hypothesize. Yet, as the investigation unfolded, it appeared that Félix Martínez Touriño was an impeccable and upright citizen. The 36-year-old director general of GL Events, which manages the Centro Internacional de Convenciones de Barcelona (CCIB), had worked his way up the corporate ladder from the position of hotel receptionist just 10 years before. People who knew him were unanimously mystified by the murder. It was clearly a contract killing, but many speculated that perhaps it was a case of mistaken identity.
As it turned out, the conspirators were not career criminals per se, and had no connections to organised crime. The motive, quite simply, was money. Martínez had discovered that one of his employees, Manuel Moreno Blancas—‘El Manolo’—was supplementing his €80,000 a year salary by charging commissions to subcontractors. Martínez told El Manolo that he was closing down his subordinate’s chiringuito, and would petition for his dismissal at a meeting of directors in France. El Manolo spoke to his sister’s Colombian husband, who in turn contracted another Colombian in Madrid, who in turn sub-contracted yet another Colombian, 23-year old Jorge Andrés Madrid, to kill Martínez before he could arrive at the meeting in France.
Intendente Josep Lluís Trapero, who headed the case for the Mossos d’Esquadra [Catalan police force], agreed to speak to Metropolitan about the Santaló case. When asked if it represented a rise in firearm murders for Barcelona, he said that in his 15-year career he has studied “a hundred and something” murder scenes. “You can’t say that it’s easier to get firearms in the past two years, than five or 10 years ago. No. In criminal circles, firearms have always been available. If you’re not from that world, it would be difficult, but in the criminal environment it’s not impossible.”
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