The crime discussed in this chapter was discovered on the morning of 19 June 1902 in the rural town of Don Benito (20,000 inhabitants) in the province of Badajoz (Extremadura). The account of the crime and trial that follows derives from newspaper reports of the time, an immediate filter of information and source of representation. Discussion and further detail are supplied in the studies by Vilabella (1983), Ait Bachir (2009) and Cortés González (2014). The milkgirl found the bodies, with multiple stab-wounds in pools of blood, of Catalina Barragán and her daughter Inés María Calderón in their home on the corner of the calle Padre Cortés and the calle Valdivia. Close to Catalina in the hallway was a broken water jug and a medical instrument case; in Inés's bedroom there were signs of a fierce struggle in defence of her virginity (the autopsy report found her inviolate). Newspaper reporting reveals how the man-in-the-street, and particularly the woman-in-the-street, were vociferous in their demands for justice for the dead women, and public subscription went on to fund an Acción Popular (a private prosecution in the public interest of the citizen, first used for the crime of the calle Fuencarral in 1888–89). The public of Don Benito showed that it was suspicious that there might be political interference in the judicial process because of the identity of the primary suspect and principal defendant, Carlos García Paredes, who for many years had been harassing Inés, a girl of humble status. Paredes was the reprobate son of a powerful family, descendant of conquistadors, grandson of a lady-in-waiting to Isabel II and nephew of the Liberal cacique of Don Benito, Senator Enrique Donoso Cortés.

The national (Madrid) press, which had noted the crime in 1902 among the many Crímenes del día, came to recognize the national significance of the trial that took place in 1903. This crime was not just a sensational case of sex and violence seized on to boost circulation. More significantly, it allowed for discussion of the socio-political issues of class and caciquismo that were the stuff of campaigning journalism at a time of crisis in the Restoration system of governance, exacerbated by the 1898 Disaster.