Iván Vaquero liked the top of the loaf, dancing in the rain and playing the Maroon 5 song Girl like you at full volume. A fatal caning ended his life in November 2020 at the age of 39, but his girlfriend Diana Gómez keeps it all very fresh. At his house they leave that part of the bread, he turns the music up in the car and he recently went outside during a summer storm to wet himself. The trial of the alleged killer of the one she defines as the love of her life begins this Monday and Diana struggles daily not to let hate, guilt and sadness win in her life. This is a story of mental health, of grief, of all that made the headlines that marked crime. His was the murder of the Velilla de San Antonio (Madrid) graffiti.
Iván and Diana met at an animal shelter six years before his death. “When our hands touched for the first time, it was like every cell in my body recognized each other,” she recalls, sitting in a cafeteria near her home in Arganda. According to Diana, he was serving a judicial sentence there for driving under the influence of alcohol. “I told him that to be part of my life, he had to rehabilitate himself,” he says. And he did. He signed up for meetings, left the bottle, and they began a relationship, with Diana’s children considering him a father. He was also diagnosed with borderline personality disorder shortly after they began dating. “It means that every emotion has been exaggerated,” he explains.
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Today she has tattooed on her wrist the four initials that became the protagonists of this story: “TQMT”, which means “I love you my everything”. It was what Iván Diana wrote in little notes that he left hidden around the house and that two years later still turn up in the most unexpected places. The last one, in an old passport. Iván had suffered a relapse in his alcohol addiction a few days before the crime. The couple argued and Diana told him to leave the house. To get their attention, he filled the city with graffiti with those initials, in some cases preceded by “no.”
Since that didn’t work, she also painted the portal of the shop where she works, which also housed what was supposed to end her life, according to the witnesses and the Civil Guard report. On the night of November 13, the victim saw minors defacing his graffiti and confronted them. A few minutes later Alberto arrived, the only one arrested for this violent death. The then 25-year-old man asked who had canceled his portal and, without giving Iván time to answer, beat him up, which took his life a few hours later. “He didn’t die because he did graffiti or because he was mentally ill, but because someone beat him,” emphasizes his partner.
Diana was subpoenaed by prosecutors to testify at the trial. He assures that he is preparing since he knows it. For two years she has been in family therapy with her children in a free service at the Arganda Women’s House. It is unusual for collateral victims of a traumatic death to receive psychological support without having to pay for it themselves. “I’ve been living in automatic mode for a long time, I never wanted to stop working and it’s thanks to therapy that I’m continuing here, because after something like that you think about quitting,” he admits. Diana continues to work in the same place where the fatal beating took place. During those two years, he has focused on his children, who were also deeply affected by the murder, and caring for the couple’s dogs. Iván’s dog India developed a tumor shortly after her owner’s death and died four months later. “There wasn’t a day that I didn’t wait for him to come home from work,” says Diana.
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Altar on the spot where Iván was beaten to death, in Velilla de San Antonio, Madrid.David Expósito
This story will not be understood unless placed in the context of mental health. Iván’s, which has been hit by the effects of confinement caused by the pandemic. This period of uncertainty made him panic if something happened to his loved ones. Alberto too, because the trial will serve to understand what prompted a boy, nicknamed El Sinsa, meaning “without blood,” to propose a fatal caning to a neighbor he didn’t know at all. And Diana’s, who had to build a life without Iván and to move beyond the guilt of being mad at him the day he died.
The conclusion of the study is a litmus test for a two-year therapy. Back to the risk of seeing the accused’s face when you turn on the TV, multiplying the results on Google, talking again about some facets of Iván’s life … “I don’t know what a process is, I never have I just hope I have space to say that Iván was a very good person and that we continue to love him. He didn’t hurt anyone but himself.” The woman can understand to the minute how she said goodbye to her partner in the La Princesa hospital. “Are you Diana? She hasn’t stopped asking about you,” the neurologist told her when he saw her. She accompanied him to the end and today he continues to accompany his family when they go to sleep and everyone puts on an Iván t-shirt.
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