• Events The Civil Guard investigates the violent death of the owner of Bodega Guillermo, in La Rioja

In August 2011 Fernando Sánchez Dragó and Salvador Sostres challenged themselves to a gastronomic hand in hand that was collected in UVE, the summer supplement that EL MUNDO published then.

It was a duel between avant-garde and traditional cuisine. Sostres, who defended in the fight to the first, chose a Michelin star, the sophisticated DiverXo. Sánchez Dragó dragged his rival to a small restaurant called Bodega Guillermo, located in Cuzcurrita de Río Tirón (La Rioja), a town of 570 registered inhabitants 312 kilometers from Madrid. "With what he serves you here, Guillermo eats 10 Japanese people 15 days," said the recently deceased writer and journalist in front of a plate of beans.

The host was Guillermo Castillo, 78, the man who put Cuzcurrita in the Spanish gastronomic guides and who this week makes headlines in the media not for his substantial menu based on Riojan dishes, his puchero coffee or the jotas he gave to his diners while they realized his homemade bramble or egg liquor, but for his violent death. "Their food is massive and forceful, like a blanket of hosts," Sostres wrote of the experience.

The last meal was served by Guillermo last Monday, May 1, Labor Day. It had been a busy weekend in his restaurant and in the town, which hosted the parties of the Tirón train. The Councilor for Culture and Tourism of Cuzcurrita, Fernando Castillo -his father and Guillermo were first cousins-, estimates that in the town there could be 3,000 people, six times the usual.

"We held a conference around wine. Two little trains leave from the Plaza Mayor and go through the wineries of the town, where they make stops and people taste wine and pinchos. Five of the eight wineries of the town participated, "says the councilor.

Guillermo Castillo owned a small winery, but with a rather anecdotal production, basically to cover the needs of his restaurant, so his business did not enter the train circuit. There was no lack, as always, of diners at its two dozen tables.

The popular festival ended on Sunday, April 30 with a festival in the Plaza Mayor. The next day, Monday in May, was also a holiday, from which in Cuzcurrita it is concluded that Guillermo could not enter the bank what was collected on a bridge in which he must have made a good cash.

It is the main hypothesis to which his neighbors resort when they try to explain the reason for the incomprehensible murder of a man who was not known enemies and who liked everyone: stealing the cash from the payments in the restaurant.

His body was discovered early on Tuesday, May 2. Diego, one of the employees who did the work of the field to Guillermo, called the daughter of the restaurateur, Yolanda, about eight in the morning. He needed a vehicle for the day's task and his father did not answer the phone or the doorbell of the house, a three-storey house with a stone façade located just 100 meters from the restaurant. The daughter came with the key, thinking that the father would have fallen asleep, overcome by the fatigue accumulated over the weekend.

Two agents of the Civil Guard, in front of Bodega Guillermo.EFE

There was no need to put the key in the lock because the door was open. He also didn't have to go far to understand that something had happened to his father. His slippers from being at home were lying on the landing next to a pool of dried blood. The objects that adorned an antique chest, thrown away.

Upon seeing the scene, Yolanda, as she herself has related, did not have the courage to enter the house and asked the employee to go to the living room, in case her father was injured after a bad fall. There was no trace of William there, but there was another bad omen: the drawers of the furniture that presided over the room open and scrambled.

Immediately the Civil Guard arrived, who did not find the restorer after making a search of the entire house except the pantry, which was always open and but that morning he had the key cast. They broke down the door. From outside, the daughter heard "it's here, it's here." He saw the toilets enter and that they did not request the first aid bag or ambulance. There was no need to say more.

The night before the daughter had left him at home around 22.00 hours. He prepared the pills he had prescribed and left them in a glass next to the TV so that when he went to see the Turkish series that followed, The Sultan, he would remember to take them.

The Judicial Police of the Civil Guard in La Rioja has taken charge of the case and the secrecy of the proceedings has been decreed, so that in the town they do not know more about the possible authorship of the crime than what is collected here. No neighbor heard anything strange; no one suspicious was seen prowling William's house.

Born on February 24, 1945 in Cuzcurrita, 40 years ago he left the fish shop he ran to take charge of a small winery, where he began to give meals in small committee until success made him open as a restaurant. His copious menu -10-12 dishes for about 30 euros- was nowhere written, he recited it: stuffed peppers, garlic soup, potatoes a la riojana, chops with shoots, roasted chorizo and black pudding, rabbit ... His proposal took shape and lovers of gastronomy from all over Spain began to make pilgrimages to the town, especially the Basque neighbors. In the town they define him as the pioneer who put Cuzcurrita on the map.

"As a head waiter he was a master, you could eat better or worse, but because he treated you it was something extraordinary. Outgoing, cheerful, the perfect host. No one left his restaurant without a smile. The people more than for the food, went for the atmosphere, it was pure Riojanism. Although it seems that someone did not like him, "says Aritza Burgos, who runs with his parents another restaurant in Cuzcurrita, the Aker grill.

Those of Aker and Bodega Guillermo were more friends than competition. On March 21, 2021, when the Covid-19 pandemic was still brewing, Aritza's parents decided to celebrate their wedding anniversary there. It was the first time they went to eat at Guillermo Castillo. "When we went to pay, he invited us. He literally said he was proud that we ate there. The pride was ours," says Aritza.

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