Spain: Entire Village Questioned Over Mayor's Killing

Police in northern Spain today began questioning the entire population of a tiny mountain village after the mayor was shot dead in an ambush on a country road.

All 37 inhabitants of Fago, in the Pyrenees near France, are suspects in a crime which police believe involved several of the many villagers who had argued with the mayor, Miguel Grima.

Mr Grima was shot on Friday evening after rocks were thrown across a road leading into the village, forcing him to stop or slow his car.

His body, peppered with shotgun wounds, was discovered in a gully beside the road the following day while his battered Mercedes car was found abandoned down a forest track some eight miles (12km) away.

Police believe several people, possibly local huntsmen who Mr Grima had been fighting through the local courts, took part in the murder.

Spanish news media were gripped by the killing as rumours of long-standing feuds among the villagers began to emerge.

"No one in the village is wicked enough to do anything like this," one resident, who asked not to be named, told the EFE news agency while police went around collecting up shotguns.

But the mayor had a long list of enemies, including local builders to whom he had refused licences and a number of people who had been prevented from registering as voters.

He had also received threats. "These were made repeatedly over a period of time," said Antonio Torres, a local official for Mr Grima’s People’s party.

One resident found rocks scattered across the road, and moved them, when he returned home on Friday night. Another who drove past the mayor’s Mercedes as it was stopped by the roadside at the same spot said he was waved on by a man carrying a flashlight - almost certainly one of the murderers.

The village has only 22 registered voters, 17 of whom gave Mr Grima their support at the last elections. But the mayor had reportedly fought about 40 court cases in which people living in Fago, or born there, challenged his decisions.

Some local people accused Mr Grima, who had moved to the village from nearby Zaragoza, of behaving like a dictator.

Police reportedly believe that the plot to kill Mr Grima was hatched over time and by several people. At least one of these would have followed him to the nearby town of Jaca, where he attended a meeting of local mayors on Friday afternoon, and would have telephoned his accomplices when Mr Grima set off for home.

They would have set the trap for him on one of the roads into the village, where cars are few and far between.

"Revenge is best eaten cold," one anonymous neighbour told El País newspaper.

Mr Grima’s family, who buried him in a nearby cemetery today, have maintained silence about the crime.