 A MAN from A Coruña has been charged with attempting to blackmail the former Dean of Santiago de Compostela Cathedral and Baroness Carmen Thyssen, part of the family who owns the Thyssen-Bornemisza art museum in Madrid.
Fernando S.M. reportedly told the Baroness that he had a video of her daughter-in-law, Blanca Cuesta, wife of her son Borja Thyssen, having sex with another man and demanded a large sum of money, saying he would distribute the film on the internet unless she paid.
The accused later told José María Díaz, ex-Dean of the famous pilgrimage cathedral in the north-western region of Galicia, that he had a DVD with conversations with the self-confessed thief of the ancient Calixtine Code which, if made public, could 'damage the image' of the temple.
He ordered Díaz to pay him 18,000 euros to prevent his publishing the DVD.
The man who admitted to stealing the Calixtine Code, a Mediaeval literary gem stored in the cathedral's archives, Manuel Fernández Castiñeiras, had worked as an electrician in the temple for 25 years.
He told police he had stolen the artefact after the cathedral authorities failed to pay his wages for some months.
It was found in his garage at his home in Milladoiro (A Coruña) in July 2012, a year after it went missing, and Fernández Castiñeiras is now in jail.
Police believe the man accused of these blackmailing incidents may have been behind four or five others.
Photograph: The famous pilgrims' cathedral of Santiago de Compostela (A Coruña), in the north-western region of Galicia
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