The history of the Goya de Esperanza Aguirre has been seen for sentence in a court in Madrid. The view held on Tuesday lasted for three hours in which part of the political family of the Madrid former president attended a crossing of accusations between brothers for the unpublished team that her husband, Fernando Ramírez de Haro, sold the builder Juan Miguel Villar Mir for more than five million euros to deal with “an important debt”. “It was a serious and difficult time for me and I sold the painting, which was mine, I still owe a beak to the bank,” explained the current Count of Born to the judge while defending himself from the accusation of his brother Íñigo: having broken his commitment to replenish that money to his brothers for the urgent sale of the family picture.
The View Room of Rosario Pino Street in Madrid hosted the meeting of the two factions of the Ramírez de Haro family, heirs and descendants of the deceased Count of Bornos. Some snorted when a witness said that the picture was from all the brothers and others snorted, while another assured that it was the exclusive property of one of them, the husband of Esperanza Aguirre, the current count who will now wait a few weeks until he knows if the sentence gives him the reason or forces him to pay more than 700,000 euros to his brother Íñigo.
Between witnesses and lawyers they drawn the trajectory of the portrait of the Marquis de Villanueva del Duero until its sale to the president of OHL. Beatriz Martínez de Haro explained that it was his brother Javier who went to James Macdonald, “the great Goya expert of the world world,” who could turn an apocryphal painting into a Goya. He got on a ladder, took a flashlight, and sang Victoria watching the buttons of the portrait jacket: “It's a beautiful Goya.”
That endorsement of the great British auction house Sotheby's had an objective: that Fernando Ramírez de Haro could pay the millionaire debts he had acquired managing the farms of his brothers. “I had an important debt and I assumed it with my goods. I assumed that important debt, it was a serious and difficult time for me and I sold the painting, which was mine. I still owe a beak to the bank,” explained the husband of Esperanza Aguirre, who encrypted that remnant in more than one and a half euros.
No relative of Bornos County argued that it was a family picture that was put in the service of Fernando Ramírez de Haro to save those debts that also dragged Esperanza Aguirre, married to him in wins. The legal fight, which first shipwrecked by criminal proceedings and has now culminated in this civil trial, is if Fernando Ramírez de Haro had the right to sell the picture and not distribute that benefit, under certain conditions, among his five brothers.
The lawyer of Íñigo Ramírez de Haro, the demanding brother, defended that this donation never existed, that the family irregularly modified the list of donated and inherited goods and, finally, breached his 2014 promise to end up returning that money. His brothers Fernando and Beatriz said in the opposite direction: “It is a donation, it is indisputable, my whole family knows it, distant or close.” As they explained, a tradition of the Bornos counts to transfer family assets to the heir of the title.
The concretion of the responses on notarial acts, wills, donations and hereditary traditions of the nobility were diluted as the interrogations advanced. “I am not very prepared in these matters, the lawyers have taken it, everything is done correctly, all taxes have been paid, other people are occupied with these legal issues,” said Esperanza Aguirre's husband. “We are not jurists, we repeat as parrots what professionals told us,” added his sister Beatriz.
From Uncle Pepe's gold shotgun
In his final allegation of conclusions, Íñigo Ramírez de Haro summarized years of lawsuits to claim that his brother Fernando pays him the more than 700,000 euros that would correspond to him for the painting. “There is no donation, what was there was a crisis situation, Don Fernando's wife explained crying that they had a catastrophic situation and Don Íñigo is impregnated with the Family Code of Honor and did what he could to help.” He was deceived, denounces, with the sale of the picture and the non -recovery of money.
The deception, according to the demand, is when in 2014 a document is signed in which the current count of Bornos and husband of Esperanza Aguirre undertakes to replace his brothers part of the money from the sale of the picture. A document that for Íñigo Ramírez de Haro was a full -fledged “contract” and that for his brothers Fernando and Beatriz was just a “declaration of intentions”.
“I was very overwhelmed and with the best intention of the world I made the statement, if I was doing well and I recovered I would do what I could,” he explained. “I resigned from my mother's inheritance,” he added. The legacy contemplates a building in San Sebastián, a villa in Biarritz, money in one of the most important banks of Switzerland and two floors in Paris, in one of which his brother Íñigo resides. But in no case did he promise to return money: “It is not a contract, I do not call it a contract, it is a purpose that I had with the best will and generosity.”
According to his lawyer, the picture was his and there is no money to return: “There was no debt to recognize, the brothers have never had any right over the picture.” The debate about what goods had been donated and what goods had been used, supposedly, to inflate the inheritance and balance the balance, reached “Uncle Pepe's gold shotgun”, which the judge considered too much before cutting the questions about the weapon.
Part of the appearance of Beatriz Ramírez de Haro has revolved around an audio revealed by eldiario.es. He who sent her nephews, children of Esperanza Aguirre, explaining that she had invented the donation of the painting to her father so that she could sell it and save themselves from bankruptcy. This Tuesday, before the judge, the sister of the plaintiff and the defendant implied that this audio was a story “very dressed and decorated” to get the support of the family of Esperanza Aguirre in a delicate moment. “It was a pressure element, it is not true what I say in the audio.”
The Court of First Instance 49 of Madrid now has the mission of diving between years of family conflict for a table that was sold in a context outside the trial. More than five million euros that saved the marriage of Esperanza Aguirre from a Goya who dodged institutional protection and ended up in the hands of OHL's highest shareholder while that construction company headed the mastodontic Canalejas operation.