Trial for Maialen's murder in Vitoria: 45 years sought for her ex-partner
The trial for the murder of Maialen, a 32-year-old woman from Vitoria who was pregnant with twins, begins this Monday at the Provincial Court of Álava. The prosecution is seeking 45 years for Jaime, her ex-partner from Valencia.
The failure of the protection system before the apartment hotel crime in Vitoria
Maialen was 32 years old, had a two-year-old daughter and was pregnant with twins when she was found dead in room 107 of an apartment hotel in Vitoria on 28 May 2023. The afternoon before, she had received 13 stab wounds—the final one necessarily fatal—at a moment when she was defenceless due to alcohol and medication consumption. Her young daughter remained at her side for 18 hours without food or drink. According to Ideal, the jury trial begins this Monday at the Provincial Court of Álava.
The sole defendant is Jaime, born in Valencia in 1998, the victim's ex-partner and member of a wealthy family from the Levantine region. He has been in preventive detention for almost three years. On Friday he was transferred to Zaballa prison from Castellón II penitentiary centre. The prosecution is seeking a total sentence of 45 years for the crimes of murder, two abortions and abandonment of a minor.
A relationship marked by asymmetry and dependence
The relationship between Maialen and Jaime began in 2019 and was marked from the outset by a profound imbalance. He had almost 100,000 followers on social media and family economic resources; she lacked work and education, had a diagnosed pathology of alcoholism and was dependent on him both emotionally and economically. After each confrontation, he would confiscate her telephone and documentation.
This vulnerability led Maialen to retract on repeated occasions when she tried to break the bond. The couple lived an itinerant life between Valencia, Vitoria, Burriana and Torremolinos, a constant mobility that prevented her from consolidating a support network. During one of these periods of apparent calm, their daughter was born and she became pregnant for the second time.
Protection orders ignored
A court in Torremolinos imposed a restraining and non-contact order on Jaime on 29 December 2022, after assessing the victim's vulnerability in the absence of documented physical violence up to that point. The Civil Guard had classified Maialen as a victim of "extreme risk".
On 17 May 2023, despite having breached the order on numerous occasions, both agreed to travel to Vitoria. He arrived first with their daughter. She did so the following day, transported by Civil Guard agents who believed that, with her family, she could distance herself from her ex's influence. She did not inform them of what was actually happening.
Once in the Álava capital, the Ertzaintza applied a standard questionnaire which concluded that there was no risk to her integrity, in part because Maialen stated that she did not fear for her life nor had suffered recent violent episodes. Following the Basque protocol in force at that time, her classification was downgraded to basic risk. "Gender-based violence does not respect regional boundaries", sources close to the case said.
The days before the crime
In the following days, despite the judicial prohibition, Maialen and Jaime lived as a couple in Vitoria. She had made a decision: to break definitively. She had met another man and wanted to ask Jaime to settle a pending debt so she could start over with her daughter and twins. However, he managed to get them to spend a few days together at a well-known apartment hotel.
She registered under her real name. He presented a photograph of someone else's identity document at reception, in the name of a certain Josep S., and had difficulty entering the date of birth.
On the afternoon of Saturday 27 May, Jaime went to a bar with the girl and repeatedly insisted by message that Maialen come down to join them. "We are a fucking rowing team, love, please, don't be long, we love you," he wrote to her. Father and daughter went up to the room at 7.08 p.m. An argument ensued in which Jaime also learned of Maialen's new relationship. According to internal sources from the Ertzaintza cited by Ideal, he took "the biggest knife there was". "We counted 13 stab wounds. The last one was fatal," those same sources describe. The girl witnessed everything.
The flight and arrest
Security cameras in common areas recorded Jaime wandering around the hotel with blood on his clothes. After changing, he went out to celebrate the night with some acquaintances. He tried to offer money to one of them for his identity document, an offer that was rejected. The next day, Sunday 28 May, he reappeared in a bar in the Ariznabarra neighbourhood, approximately one kilometre from the apartment hotel.
At 2.15 p.m., Maialen's family members went to the establishment after receiving no response to their messages, as they had a family lunch planned. Upon entering the room, one of them shouted: "He has killed her!". They collected the girl and police alert was immediately activated.
Jaime was still in Vitoria. He left the city at around 5.45 p.m. after paying 900 euros to a taxi driver to take him to Valencia. Upon leaving the Ertzaintza jurisdiction, the regional police alerted the Civil Guard, which, with the collaboration of the taxi driver and his company, intercepted the vehicle at the Alagón toll booth, near Zaragoza.
The weapon used in the crime was never found. The prosecution has set its request at 45 years in prison. "Faced with the maximum expression of gender-based violence, we request the maximum penal response that our system permits," they stated. The defence, meanwhile, said it faces the trial "with great respect, conscious of the pain and suffering that surrounds the case".
Source: Ideal