• Courts Sentenced to 25 years in prison to the agent of the Urban Guard who murdered her partner
  • Sentence The jury finds guilty of murder to the defendants for the 'crime of the Urban Guard'

There are movies and series based freely on real events and there are others that faithfully describe proven facts of a court ruling. The official synopsis of the Netflix series, The Body on Fire, which will be released in the coming months, narrates how in May 2017 "the corpse of a man appears burned inside a car in the Foix reservoir, in Barcelona. This is Pedro, a police officer. The event quickly arouses the interest of public opinion as the investigation reveals a network of toxic relationships, deception, violence and sexual scandals involving Pedro and two of his fellow policemen: his partner Rosa and her ex-boyfriend, Albert.

The script of the series could be the very sentence of the "crime of the Urban Guard", a deadly love triangle between three agents: Rosa Peral, her lover Albert López and her then partner Pedro Rodríguez. His body was found inside a charred car near the Foix Reservoir on May 2, 2017. Almost three years later, the Court of the Jury of the Audience of Barcelona sentenced Rosa for murder, to a sentence of 25 years in prison, and Albert, to 20 years. The court imposed five more years on her since they apply the aggravating factor of kinship with the victim as a couple.

The photo that Rosa took at a meal they attended the same day her boyfriend's body was found.

In the summer of 2016 Rosa and Pedro, colleagues in the Guardia Urbana, began a relationship that she "simultaneous for a while with her marriage" with an agent of the Mossos d'Esquadra, and with which she had with Albert for years. In December 2016 she separated from the father of her two daughters and Pedro went to live with Rosa at their house in Cubelles. Albert found out a month later, at the beginning of 2017, which led to a confrontation between him and Rosa. From that time are his harsh messages to her: "You are a whore and a liar, you are a fake and you have no balls to tell the truth."

However, Pedro also began to distrust Rosa, as the sentence indicates, and that made the woman look for her lover again. In its verdict, the jury considered that "between March and April 2017 there was a new and gradual approach, emotional first, and sentimental later, between Rosa Peral and Albert López". The two came "to the conclusion that the victim, for various reasons, hindered their relationship" and so they drew up a plan to kill him on the night of May 1-2, 2017. Rosa was at home with her daughters and Pedro. She waited for him to fall asleep to warn Albert, who traveled 60 kilometers at dawn to her house. Once there "jointly, or at least one of them with the consent and active collaboration of the other, they assaulted the victim and deprived him of his life in a violent way," the sentence states. Rosa's two daughters were upstairs when the murder was committed.

Albert López and Rosa Peral, at the trial.

After the crime, the two launched the second part of the plan that consisted of "spreading insinuations about a personal confrontation between the victim and the ex-husband" of Rosa to incriminate him. To do this, they drove with the mobile phone near where the ex-husband of the condemned woman lived, in case geolocation tests were done, and then they disposed of the body by putting it inside the trunk and setting fire to the vehicle in a forest. It was discovered on May 4, 2017 by a hiker. She reported that Pedro had left after a new argument and that she did not know anything until she was informed of the discovery of the body, identified by a metal prosthesis on the back since it was completely burned.

The same day that the body was found, Rosa and Albert went to a meal at the restaurant Els Peixaters, in the port of Barcelona, farewell to a colleague of the Urbana. They entered together and the rest of the agents present found it strange, since it was as if they had a relationship again. One of Pedro's companions of the Guardia Urbana was the one who most suspected, although he attributed it to a new infidelity of hers.

Since her arrest, Rosa Peral left signs of her controversial character

In that lunch Rosa was immortalized sticking out her tongue in an iconic image of this love triangle, for the moment in which it was taken and her closeness to Albert, and that is also reproduced in the series that will premiere Netflix, The body in flames, starring Úrsula Corberó, as Rosa, and Quim Gutiérrez , such as Albert, among others. It is the first fiction about the so-called "crime of the Urban Guard" but this love and deadly triangle has inspired the bookSólo tú me tendrás, by La Vanguardia journalist Toni Muñoz and four episodes of the program Crims broadcast by TV3.

Since her arrest, Rosa Peral has left signs of her controversial character. He always tried to accuse Albert of the crime, even before his arrest, as messages with other comrades of the Urban Guard demonstrate. At the trial he repeated over and over again that he felt "afraid" the night of the murder and that he hid with his daughters upstairs when he saw his lover arrive with an axe and then had "his face full of blood". Like Albert, she maintains her innocence despite being convicted.

Peral has starred in several confrontations with other inmates in these years in prison which caused her to be transferred from center on a couple of occasions. He is now serving his sentence in the prison of Mas d'Enric (Tarragona) after the sentence was firm when confirmed by the Supreme Court, a year and a half ago. There are only some fringes such as paying the 885,000 euros of compensation to the family of the victim or completing the administrative process for the expulsion of the body of the convicted. It will be the last chapter of a crime that reminds us that reality always surpasses fiction.


  • Barcelona
  • Violence
  • Ursula Corberó

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