Borja Villacís, brother of Begoña Villacís, shot dead in Madrid

Multiple shots to the head: brother of Begoña Villacís dies

No assassination, no arrest, no closed case. There is a man shot dead in Madrid, a fugitive attacker, and a surname —Villacís— capable of turning a crime story into a national headline. Borja Villacís, brother of former Madrid deputy mayor Begoña Villacís, died after being shot outside a restaurant in the capital, with multiple impacts to the head and the attacker still at large. He was 43 years old.

In the early hours, all versions agreed on the essentials: a shooting in the middle of the street, a fatal victim, and an attacker who fled. The rest —who that man was, who he associated with, what was in his record— began to arrive later, and it arrived far less orderly. A violent incident became, within hours, a political battlefield.

Who was Begoña Villacís's brother?

Far from the sympathetic portrait that usually accompanies a family tragedy, what emerged in the news coverage was an uncomfortable profile. The deceased was charged in a drug trafficking and money laundering case, according to the information cited trinc the incident. He was not a public figure on his own merits: his notoriety came from his kinship with a politician who for years embodied the discourse of moderate regeneration in Madrid.

To that data were added others that public discussion itself accumulated: a pending trial over a cocaine matter, fights in his youth, and his past membership in Ultrasur, the ultra group linked to a football club.

A clarification is needed that many analyses crossed without restraint: he was charged, not convicted. There are accusations, not sentences. The distance between "he was being investigated" and "he did it" is exactly what separates an alleged crime from a conviction.

The circle trying to rebuild his image

The alternative narrative soon appeared. Sources close to the deceased claimed he was "focused on his work and his things," that he had passed exams to become a train driver, and that he had acquired his own VTC license with a friend. All to present him as a "rebellious young man" who had turned his life around.

The response was immediate and scathing: if the proof of a new life is a VTC license, then the bar counter also serves as a résumé. Several analyses pointed to the same tendency in coverage of incidents involving people of a certain background or affinity: the search for the detail that humanizes, the nuance that excuses.

Where is the boundary between reporting with context and whitewashing? No one has drawn it. What is clear is that each new piece of the record peine the debate instead of closing it.

How the shooting peine and why no one has been arrested

The account of the events is short and dry. The victim received several shots, with impacts to the head, outside a restaurant. The attacker fled and, as of this discussion, no arrest was recorded. The investigation remains open.

Two things stood out. First, the coldness of the attack: someone who shoots to the head and leaves without being intercepted does not improvise. Second, the neighborhood reaction, with homemade recordings from windows that provided audiovisual material to investigators. "Several impacts to the head. They went for the sure thing," summarized one of the diagnoses collected.

As for the motive, caution is mandatory. There has been mention of a drug-related settling of scores, a traffic argument, and, without any evidence, much murkier interests. None of that is proven.

"Traficante-state": the frame imposed before the facts

Within hours, the incident ceased to be an incident. The surname did the rest. Talk turned to a state captured by drug trafficking, a Spain that would resemble Mexico or Sinaloa, of Madrid freedom as a broken slogan. "It smells of blow," was the blunt dismissal.

The reading has an elementary problem of timing. The case affects a right-wing family, and many of those who for years demanded blood for every scandal of others suddenly found themselves asking for prudence, and vice versa. Comparisons with a settling of scores between gangs exploded before there was a single detainee.

The shooting that left a Vox founder seriously wounded years ago was cited as a comparison. That case, it is argued, faded without political consequences. The contrast is uncomfortable for both sides, because it shows that the frame is chosen according to who is affected.

Argüelles, the Cubos, and youth violence decades old

The incident uncovered a sociological vein that is usually buried: that of youth violence in Madrid's affluent neighborhoods. Several accounts recalled the tradition of the Argüelles area as a center of the billiard gangs of the 1960s and 70s, the groups of Plaza de los Cubos, and the never-resolved mix of well-to-do youths with people from the outskirts.

"The Argüelles area has always been the Mecca of violence in Madrid," one of the texts argued. The reference to the so-called Panda del Moco, the thugs of the 80s, and the liturgy of the central religious schools —fray Luis de León, la Salle Covadonga— draws a map that the narrative of modern Spain preferred not to look at.

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What is known about the alleged perpetrator?

The name that began to circulate, without full official confirmation, is that of a person of working-class origin, completely outside the victim's social circle. That detail immediately dismantles the hypothesis of a confrontation between equals and, at the same time, opens the question no one answers.

Faced with the attempt to depoliticize the crime on one side and to blow it out of proportion on the other, the material points in the same direction: victim and alleged perpetrator came from worlds that barely touched. If they did not share a social sphere, why did they meet that day? The answer, simply, does not yet exist.

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The temptation to close the case with a sarracena is enormous. In light of what has been published, the only certainty is that a 43-year-old man is dead, that his alleged murderer is still at large, and that judicial truth, if it comes, will arrive late and with fewer pages than the noise had. Everything suggests that the matter will fade from the front pages before it is resolved in court, and also that it will flare up again the next time an illustrious surname appears alongside a violent incident.