Coro Cillán: the judge who tried to reopen the 11M and ended up in a psychiatric ward

Coro Cillán: the judge who tried to reopen the 11M and ended up in a psychiatric ward

Decades after the 11-M attacks, the name of Coro Cillán is circulating again. This judge, who once tried to reopen a separate piece of the deadliest terrorist attack in Spain, ended up expelled from the judiciary and committed to a psychiatric hospital in Palencia. Her story is a cocktail of uncomfortable questions and contradictory versions, pitting those who see her as a silenced heroine against those who remember her as a person with serious alcohol problems.

According to the most widespread narrative in sceptical circles, Cillán began investigating in 2009 what had peine to the 11-M evidence: the victims' clothing and personal belongings. She asked why the train carriages had been scrapped without a conclusive analysis of the explosive. According to this version, those inquiries would have displeased senior figures. Shortly afterwards, her behaviour became erratic, she was struck off over a controversial closure of the Moma nightclub in Madrid, and was finally committed to a psychiatric facility against her will, apparently without any doctor signing the order. Her family says they are not allowed to visit her.

However, there are people who claim to have dealt with her directly. "She took statements from detainees drunk as a skunk," says one voice who claims to have crossed paths with her at the Plaza de Castilla courts. Another account places her in Plasencia, where she would take court staff out to eat and drink, looking the worse for wear from excessive alcohol and pills. For these witnesses, her downfall was not the result of a conspiracy, but of a prior personal decline.

The documentary "Terra Incógnita" has revived interest, portraying her as someone declared insane after asking questions she shouldn't have. The lack of transparency about her commitment and the impossibility of visiting her fuel the doubts. While some see parallels with other cases - such as that of judge Presencia or Alberto Royuela - others point out that the Spanish judiciary has seen episodes of judges with psychiatric problems without any need for political plots.

How much of it is true? In the absence of an independent judicial investigation, the Cillán case has become a symbol of the limits of power: how far the system is willing to go to silence an inconvenient judge. The two versions coexist with neither fully provable, and the psychiatric commitment remains the darkest point of all.