In the Netflix series 'The Burning Body' about the crime committed by the Urban Police, the Mossos inspector goes to Rosa Peral's house to arrest her. There a group of police forces burst in and take the protagonist, played by Úrsula Corberó, in handcuffs. This is perhaps the scene that is furthest from reality in the entire production. Rosa Peral, the real one, was never arrested at her house but rather she was the one who voluntarily showed up at the Mossos police station in Sant Feliu de Llobregat with the intention of betraying Albert and pointing him out as the only person guilty of the murder of her boyfriend. , Pedro Rodriguez. However, in those days, the Mossos homicide group had already accumulated a lot of evidence against Rosa's guilt and they ended up arresting her once she finished her statement.
It was May 13, 2017. The crime had occurred on the night of May 1 to 2. In the house, according to the geolocation of the cell phones, were Pedro Rodríguez (the victim and Rosa's boyfriend), Rosa Peral (the victim's girlfriend) and Albert López (Rosa's lover for 4 years). The night of the events, Albert had traveled from Badalona after receiving Rosa's call. In the first interrogations before the Mossos, without yet being suspected of anything, both Rosa and Albert gave the same version and suggested that Rubén (in the series baptized as Javi), Rosa's ex-husband, with whom he had a dispute, was behind the crime. for custody of his two daughters, and not one as appears in the series. Rosa and Albert continued to see each other in the days after the crime and he even slept several nights at Rosa's house. On the 4th they went together to a police lunch and Rosa appeared in a photograph, sticking out her tongue in a casual way, like in the series. That same day in the afternoon the Mossos found Pedro's body in the trunk of his car in the Foix reservoir. When the investigators went to Rosa's house to inform her of the death of her boyfriend Pedro de Rosa, Albert López was also at her house. That doesn't appear in the series.
When Rosa feels cornered and begins to realize that the Mossos are going to discover her, she makes a desperate attempt to try to save herself by betraying Albert. The day before, Friday, May 12, she goes to a famous law firm in Barcelona where she begins to put the new version of herself into practice. Her lawyers, seeing her so nervous, recommend that she call the Mossos and tell them everything she knows about her. She phones Corporal Joan Carles and tells him that after several days of thinking about it, she now knows who killed Pedro. Corporal Joan Carles asks her one last question: "Rosa, can you tell me who you suspect?" She answers: “from Albert López.” After that, the Mossos already knew that they would arrest Rosa and Albert the next day. It had to be a simultaneous arrest. Both at the same time. The woman appeared voluntarily at the Sant Feliu de Llobregat police station. Before starting, the agents told her that she should find a lawyer. Surprised, she asked them if she was accused. And the agents confirmed it. From there, she began her statement by pointing at Albert and saying that she had not said anything for the previous 13 days because she felt threatened by him. When she finished accusing Albert she was arrested. Three days later she testified before the Vilanova judge for three long hours and she ordered her imprisonment. Since then she has not gone out on the street again.
The arrest of Albert López was as it appears in the series. He was arrested at the Free Zone police station. There, the Mossos tried to make sure that Albert did not have his service pistol on him. Investigators previously reported his intentions with a member of the Urban Police who participated in the plan to arrest Albert. The Barcelona police commander asked Albert, who was working that day, to change his clothes, leave his uniform and go up to his office to collect some papers that he had to take to the Portal del Ángel police station. When he went up, already dressed in civilian clothes, he found that two police officers from the Esquadra were waiting for him in the office and detained him. There he released a phrase that the series does not include. “I guess I'm not the only one detained, right?”
The investigators were clear that Pedro's crime had been committed on May 1, but there was only one thing that bothered them: Rosa Peral's father had declared that he had seen Pedro on May 2. The series shows how the father lies to the police because his daughter tells him so, but in reality it went a little further. The father, while giving the keys to Rosa's house to the investigators so that they can search the house just the day after his daughter's arrest, bursts into tears and confesses through tears that he did not see Pedro on the 2nd and that he lied because Rosa asked him to.
Unlike the series, in which the entire weight of the investigations falls on a single investigator, the Mossos' work was a team effort. The homicide group from the southern metropolitan region participated, made up of 12 people: a sergeant, two corporals and nine agents, of which two were women. The investigation was laborious and with the accused in preventive detention, new evidence appeared that further reinforced the guilt of both. Checking Rosa Peral's phone they found a photo that they had not noticed before. It was an image from 15 days before the crime in which Pedro appeared setting up a sofa in the downstairs room. The back wall was half painted orange. When the Mossos searched the house, the wall was white, which indicated that it had been painted. In the series the two accused appear painting a white wall on which there was no trace of the orange tone. In that room, as time passed, another piece of evidence appeared that showed that the crime had been committed there: they found a drop of blood, belonging to Pedro, on the light bulb hanging from the ceiling. It does appear in the series.
