On the night of September 21, 2013, Spain learned the name of Asunta. The twelve-year-old girl of Chinese origin, adopted by Rosario Porto and Alfonso Basterra, was found dead in a wooded area of Teo, a town in the province of A Coruña. After an extensive investigation, the adoptive parents would be convicted of murder, with Rosario committing suicide in prison in 2020 and Alfonso serving time until 2031.
The events have served as inspiration for The Asunta Case, a fictional series starring Candela Peña and Tristán Ulloa that has enjoyed great success on Netflix since its premiere. Likewise, it has also allowed the media to highlight the crime and talk about it again in gatherings and interviews. One of the many cases has been the case of Mañaneros, the morning show on La 1 presented by Jaime Cantizano.
During this Wednesday's broadcast, the public channel's space spoke with María Fe, a nun who worked in the Brieva prison (Álava) where Asunta's adoptive mother committed suicide. Among many other details, she has revealed Porto's concerns about the image he gave to the press, in addition to his little contact with the other prisoners. Furthermore, he assured that he did not have any type of sympathy directed towards Alfonso Basterra.
“Everything is talked about there, she communicated with the girls, but she considered them inferior. She was an unbalanced woman, perhaps her family or social environment made her seem like the right person. She was in La Robleda, a psychiatric sanatorium here, in Santiago de Compostela, in Galicia. She didn't have many friends or sympathies. She wanted affection, poor thing. “I think she didn't want to die, she wanted to be noticed,” she commented.
“In my opinion she thought a lot about herself because she was always worried about what the press said about her, what television said about her. And she very rarely thought about others. She did not communicate with the rest of the girls who talk there about everything, the weather, what happened in prison last week, what they say, what they don't say, health, illness, of everything. And she did not communicate with the girls, she always considered them inferior,” she said.
“He has not treated me, he was absolutely oblivious to my presence. He won't come to Santiago because they kill him with tomatoes. Alfonso Basterra loves himself a lot, I don't think he is capable of taking his own life,” he attacked, before telling how Basterra and Porto communicated in prison: “They sent each other written messages. I don't see how they sent them so secretly and then they appeared in the newspapers. They were sent to them through other prisoners. "Alfonso dominated Rosario more than Rosario dominated Alfonso."
