Mariano Sánchez

Mariano Sánchez is a prison official whose delivery of a tranquilizer to Doctor Berasategui becomes a crucial link in the doctor’s death. After fleeing, Sánchez is found in Zaragoza; confronted with a photograph, pharmacy evidence, and the prospect of prosecution, he admits bringing Berasategui the medicine but insists he did not know what the doctor intended to do with it.

Identity and Circumstances

Sánchez is identified as a fugitive prison employee. The police locate him in Zaragoza, at a friend’s home, after a night out that ended in a minor traffic accident. By the time he is brought in, he is visibly suffering from a hangover: his eyes are bloodshot, his mouth is dry, and he has asked for water three times while waiting in the interview room.

Evidence and Confrontation

When Iriarte and Amaia Salazar enter, Sánchez immediately says he will not speak. Iriarte does not require an answer to begin setting out the case. He places before Sánchez an enlarged photograph showing him at the door of Berasategui’s cell, putting something through its hatch. Although Berasategui was being held incommunicado, Sánchez had approached the cell and supplied the medication that ended the doctor’s life.

Sánchez first argues that the photograph proves nothing because the object cannot be made out. He acknowledges approaching the cell but describes the contact as a handshake, adding that he liked Berasategui. Iriarte then presents a pharmacy bag containing the packaging for the tranquilizer Sánchez had bought. The pharmacist remembers him, making the purchase a concrete link between Sánchez and the medicine rather than an ambiguous movement in the photograph.

Admission and Unresolved Account

Iriarte presents the possibility of cooperation as a way for Sánchez to limit the consequences: a judge might treat the matter as a breach of prison rules, on the premise that Sánchez did not know what he was carrying. Sánchez seizes on that explanation and says Berasategui asked him to buy a medicine, that he had no idea what the doctor would do with it, and that Berasategui had told him to look after him. His account thus confirms the essential act—the purchase and delivery—while denying knowledge of its fatal purpose.

Asked which judge he means, Sánchez says it was the judge who had visited the prison that day. The claim introduces a further, unverified connection into his explanation; the evidence establishes that Sánchez invokes the judge, not that the judge instructed him to provide the drug. When Sánchez looks at Amaia Salazar and begins to tremble, his earlier refusal has given way to an effort to secure leniency. His testimony clarifies how the tranquilizer reached Berasategui, but does not settle how much Sánchez knew or whether his appeal to the judge is truthful.