Ritxi Hires a Lawyer for Alice and Secures Her Release

Ritxi Hires a Lawyer for Alice and Secures Her Release marks a startling turn after the deaths of Alice Espanet and Ritxi’s children: the day after their cremation, Ritxi acted to get Alice out of prison. He sought a leading criminal defense lawyer, and the defense quickly challenged her pretrial detention while setting out a strategy based on mental incapacity. The judge granted release over the prosecution’s objections, subject to bail and continuing restrictions.

From isolation to intervention

The decision began the day after the children’s cremation. Ritxi had withdrawn to the Rioja Alavesa, but broke that isolation long enough to contact a lawyer he trusted. He asked this lawyer to find the city’s best criminal defender. The sequence matters: Ritxi did not simply make a public appeal or offer support in general terms; he set a legal process in motion at a moment when Alice remained in custody.

The choice is presented as particularly surprising to The Narrator, who identifies it as the most unexpected and troubling point in the case. That response makes the intervention more than a procedural detail. In the wake of the children’s deaths, Ritxi acted on Alice’s behalf, despite the gravity of the accusation against her. The account establishes the decision and its consequences without supplying a full explanation of his motives.

Carmela Basaguren’s defense

The name that emerged was Carmela Basaguren, a lawyer nearing retirement age and known as a feminist fighter. She accepted the case on the same day she was approached and began work immediately. The first priority was to secure Alice’s release from Prisión de Zaballa. The speed of Carmela’s response set the pace for the next step: an appeal was promptly placed before the judge.

The appeal argued that pretrial detention should be interrupted. Its grounds included the absence of a danger that Alice would commit another offense, her established ties, and the lack of a flight risk. These arguments addressed the practical reasons for keeping her in custody rather than minimizing the seriousness of the case. At the same time, the defense signaled that its eventual objective would be acquittal on the ground of mental incapacity.

To support that position, Carmela invoked Article 20.1 of the Spanish Criminal Code. The provision exempts a person from criminal responsibility if, at the time of the offense, a mental anomaly or disorder prevented that person from understanding the unlawfulness of the act or acting in accordance with that understanding. The defense presented this not merely as a later possibility for trial, but as the legal framework it intended to pursue from the outset.

The prosecution’s objection and the release

The prosecution opposed Alice’s release. It emphasized the exceptional seriousness of the allegations: she was accused of two murders, with the aggravating circumstance of kinship, and faced a potential forty-year prison sentence. Its objection placed the scale of the alleged crimes directly against the defense’s claims that detention was unnecessary and that flight or reoffending posed no sufficient risk.

The judge nevertheless accepted the defense’s request, to the surprise of many. Alice was released after surrendering her passport, agreeing to sign in at the courts every fifteen days, and depositing the required bail of 50,000 euros. The decision therefore ended her immediate imprisonment but did not leave her free of legal oversight: her movement and ongoing compliance remained subject to explicit conditions.

Significance of the decision

The account’s sharpest description of the outcome holds two figures together: the accused killer is free, and the ghost is free. That juxtaposition resists an uncomplicated reading of release as either vindication or closure. The judge’s decision changed Alice’s custodial status; it did not decide the eventual question of criminal responsibility or erase the deaths at the center of the case.

Ritxi’s intervention also redirected the story from the public tragedy toward a legal contest over how Alice should be judged. The defense made mental incapacity central early, while the prosecution foregrounded the alleged murders and the severity of their punishment. The release established a new, conditional situation: Alice was outside prison, the case remained unresolved, and the opposing accounts of her responsibility were now formally in view.