“How was I to know that I had to protect my daughter from her mother?”

What was Yaiza like? He was 4 years old. She was very shy. Daycare cost him a lot. When I wore it, it was close to my body, I ripped off my clothes so I wouldn’t leave. We tried very hard to make him adapt. Now she had her group of friends. I was super happy.

What was he doing when he was 4 years old? I did theater. The day she died, murdered by her mother, she had a play at the school. It was the end of year party, on May 31st. He was acting as a butterfly. It has become a bit of a kind of symbol, on her tombstone there is a butterfly, which she drew at school. He drew very well. He also loved soccer. ‘You have to see how it kicks’, they all told me. He had started with English and swimming & mldr; but the pool gave him a panic. I had to get into the water with her so that little by little she would loosen up. Lately I was swimming a bit with the cuffs. He was making progress. I already knew that she was going to get over it all, because she had always been like that. He would have been a great person.

Was she loving? Very much. This has all been so hard in part because of how loving she was. Every night he would say to me “I love you, papa”. And I replied “bona nit, I love you too & rdquor ;. And he repeated: “Yaiza, you know that I will always be here to protect you, right? & Rdquor ;. “Yes dad, I know & rdquor;” he would reply. It’s not that I feel guilty about what happened, but not being able to do anything to protect her hurts. When I go to his tombstone I have to tell him I’m sorry, I can’t tell him anything else, I can’t even speak. “Sorry Yaiza, sorry & rdquor ;. I couldn’t fucking do anything.

Do you feel that you have failed? Yes. But who would have thought he had to protect her from her mother. I can protect her from the car that can hit you, from a thousand bad things. But from his own mother? It is something you do not expect. That nobody expects. And then you don’t know how to manage.

How are you now? Shattered. Everything reminds me of her. I live in the same house but I cannot enter his room. Not even see a photo because I am collapsed. It is something that no father or mother would ever have to live with. He died when he was about to turn 5 years old. On his birthday, I needed to call the family and ask them to accompany me to his tombstone to put a candle on it. And then came the start of the school year, now Christmas … Sometimes it makes me want to run away. I live near her school, my daughter will no longer be there, to grow up, to learn. I come across children of 4 or 5 years of age, their age, who ask me about Yaiza, why is she dead. They are very difficult things to bear

Are you going to change house? Psychologists have advised me not to do it yet, that I shouldn’t rush. But I am clear that this house has no future for me.

Do you want to remember how everything changed? I divorced my wife three years ago. With the separation, she became a bad person. He tried to get custody of the girl from me. “I have given birth to her & rdquor ;, I repeated to myself. Luckily, the judge said that she had already seen other mothers like that and considered that I should not withdraw her. This past spring, all of a sudden, my ex-wife wanted to come back with me. He did not accept that I had remade my life. He would show up at my house, say that he needed me, that he wanted to be with me, he harassed me. I never suspected that the girl could take any risk, I believed that it was something that only went with me. On Monday, May 31, I went to look for Yaiza at school and one of her friends told me that my daughter had not come all day. I called my ex-wife and the phone was off. Then I called my mother-in-law and she went to my ex-wife’s house to see what was going on. I heard how he opened the door, how he began to scream that they were both dead.

Why did he do it? He wanted to hurt me, he wanted to take his own life and for the girl not to stay with me. She wanted to take her off because she had given birth to her … as if she were a & mldr; someone’s life does not belong to anyone, whether you are the father or the mother.

Does your case bother the institutions? Yes. Because the crime was committed by a woman and not a man. I understand, most violence is carried out by men. But you don’t have to compete or compare. Yaiza’s is a case that must be seen. My daughter has been forgotten. A father recently killed his son, Leo, in a hotel on Paral·lel avenue in Barcelona and the media did not say that he was the second child this year – a victim of vicarious violence. My daughter is not in any statistics.

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What hurts the most? That I have to ask for support by raising my hand: “This has happened to me, can you help me? What am I missing & rdquor ;. And that my daughter is not remembered anywhere because vicarious violence, they say, can only be from men to women. I wrote an email to the ‘councilor’ Ciuró – responsible for Justice. Now I do feel quite supported by her – she met with Ciuró this Monday in the department and the ‘councilor’ has apologized to her. The Generalitat is preparing a decree that will include minors killed by their parents, whether they are fathers or mothers, and Ciuró has also told me that the statistics are going to change and that they will include my daughter. It’s what I wanted to achieve.