Else Beekman
Same tracks, same village, same quiet October countryside outside Zamora. She’d even brought her own dog with her that morning. At some point during the run she called her mother, just one of those ordinary, nothing-special phone calls between a daughter and her mum. She was 27. She worked as an auxiliary nurse. Her name was Arancha C., and on 24 October 2023, she went out for a jog and never came home.
Her mother was still on the phone when the dogs reached her.
There were seven of them , three mastiffs, two German shepherds, two puppies, all belonging to a shepherd named Pedro G., a 60-year-old livestock farmer who kept his flock near La Hiniesta, a village close to where the tracks run. They were supposed to be working dogs, guardians of the flock. Instead they found Arancha on the agricultural path and attacked her. By the time it was over, she had been bitten more than 100 times.
Her mother heard it happen. Then the call went dead.
Arancha’s parents got in the car and drove to the scene. The emergency services were already there when they arrived. It didn’t matter. Their daughter was already gone.
Neighbours knew this would happen
Here’s the thing that the people of Roales del Pan and La Hiniesta can’t get past, the thing that turns their grief into something sharper: they knew. Neighbours had been raising the alarm about Pedro’s dogs for years. They told anyone who would listen that the animals were left loose, that they roamed the tracks freely, that there were no proper fences, no enclosures, nothing keeping them away from the walkers and joggers and farmers who used those same paths every single day.
There had been incidents and scares. At some point the pack had allegedly gone after a neighbour’s small dog near the village pelota court and killed it. People had complained. And still, every morning, the dogs were there.
No sign of Pedro near the scene
Pedro wasn’t, though. Not on the day Arancha died. The shepherd who lived in an old caravan parked beside his pasture, was somewhere else entirely when his animals attacked her. He came back later, brought to the scene under Guardia Civil escort to move his flock away. When the officers had pulled up in their patrol car earlier that day, the dogs had gone for them too.
Pedro was arrested and locked up for a while. A judge ordered provisional detention on the grounds that releasing him posed a real risk. He would simply go back to keeping his animals the same careless way. His lawyers appealed. He was let out and refused to say a word to the Guardia Civil after his arrest.
Authorities took all seven dogs to veterinary services. Investigators went through the witness statements, the prior complaints, the state of Pedro’s land. Their conclusion: the animals were never properly confined, had never been kept in adequate conditions. One by one, all seven were put down at a specialist centre in Simancas.
The trial opens this Thursday in Zamora.
Reckless homicide
Prosecutors are charging Pedro with reckless homicide. Their argument is that he had lost control of animals that were already classified as dangerous, and that his absence that morning, when he might have been able to stop what happened, sits at the heart of his guilt. They want two and a half years in prison, plus €250,000 for Arancha’s family.
Her family is asking for four years. Their lawyers have spent months building a case around a pattern: the incidents, the complaints, the absent fences, the years of neighbours pleading for something to be done. They want the court to see the full picture.
Reporters who went to both villages in the days before the trial described communities that are still mourning and furious. People talked about Arancha. She was young, full of life, just a girl out on a morning run. They talked as well about about all the times they’d warned someone, anyone, that those dogs were going to hurt somebody.
They were right. And now they’re waiting to find out if that matters.