VALENCIA'S fallera queens and their entourages opened the city's spectacular March festival yesterday (Tuesday) with their usual procession, but this time each of them carrying a white fish in memory of eight-year-old Gabriel Cruz Ramírez.
Before Gabriel's body was found and when his family – and even the police – were hoping to find him alive, the boy's mum, Patricia, urged the public to 'flood Spain with little fishies' so he would know the entire nation was thinking of him.
From when he was very tiny – practically as soon as he was able to talk – Gabriel knew the names of 'hundreds of species' of fish and has always been fascinated by them, Patricia Ramírez said.
She and Gabriel's father Ángel Cruz said their little boy wanted to be a marine biologist when he grew up.
Even the police investigation was named 'Operation Nemo' from the start.
Gabriel was nicknamed Pescaíto ('Little Fishie') by his parents due to his love of sea creatures.
This week, the mayoress of Almuñécar (Granada province), Trinidad Herrera, wrote to the child's parents asking their permission to name the town's sea-life centre after their son, and for it to be called the Gabriel Cruz Ramírez Aquarium.
Sra Herrera came up with the idea during Almuñécar's minute's silence for Gabriel, during which hundreds of residents deposited candles and drawings of fish outside the aquarium.
As yet, Patricia Ramírez and Ángel Cruz have not formally replied, but it is expected they will write back to say they would be delighted for Gabriel to have his own 'fish centre'.
Patricia, quoting a tale someone had sent her by email, said her son has 'won' because 'the wicked witch has gone', referring to his killer, and he is 'now swimming with the fish'.
Quezada 'reported for theft' from dying ex-boyfriend
Ana Julia Quezada, 44 (second picture), confessed earlier to murdering Gabriel during a 'row' – hitting him with the blunt end of an axe, causing him head injuries, then strangling him – even though detectives are convinced the crime was meticulously planned and did not take place in the heat of the moment.
Quezada, who had been in a relationship with Gabriel's father at the time, claimed the boy attacked her physically in temper and that she had retaliated.
It is no secret that the little boy and his father's girlfriend did not get along at all well.
Her family in the Dominican Republic are said to be in disbelief, with her brother insisting she 'came from very humble origins' and 'would never take an innocent child's life', while her mother blames 'the devil' for 'entering her', although admits Quezada practically 'never bothered with' her family of origin after moving to Spain in 1994, aged 20.
Quezada met her husband Miguel Ángel in a brothel she was working at in Burgos and they were soon married, after which Ana Julia brought her daughter Ribelca Josefina – whose father, Santiago Gil, was Quezada's boyfriend in her native country – to Spain. Miguel Ángel adopted Ribelca and the couple had another child, Judith.
Three months after her arrival, in March 1996, Ribelca – then aged four – fell out of a seventh-floor window at the family home and was killed instantly, but her death was considered accidental and the case closed; now, police in Spain have now applied to a court to reopen it.
Judith, who is now 24 and still lives in Burgos with Miguel Ángel, was hospitalised with a panic attack after finding out her mother had murdered Gabriel.
Quezada separated from Judith's father and began a relationship with another man in the city, a successful business owner 20 years her senior.
This man's family reported Quezada to the police in 2012 for allegedly having 'stolen large quantities of money and jewellery' when this man was 'on his deathbed'.
“She was two-faced,” one of the man's children said. “She would seem kind and friendly at first, but we later realised she only wanted his money.
“[Quezada] convinced him to make her beneficiary of his life insurance, worth €35,000, and took all the jewellery out of the house and emptied his current accounts...she was obsessed with money and image. Just two days before our father's death, she used his money for a breast enhancement operation."
The man's daughter said she stole €16,000 from him days after he died, and was having an affair with another man while their father was in hospital.
Two boyfriends later, she met Sergio and they decided to move to Las Negras, near Níjar (Almería) to open a bar after falling in love with the area on holiday in 2014; the couple were married by then, but eventually separated.
Quezada had been with Gabriel's father for less than a year when she killed the child.
A MAN declared dead at his home in the province of Tarragona was on his way to the funeral parlour when he turned out to be alive, according to police sources.
A NEW child protection law named after a British musician living in Spain has been approved in Congress and is set to be signed off by the Council of Ministers on Tuesday, June 8.
