A small village becomes the true crime capital of Spain due to a death 30 years ago, attracting fans of this style and dissatisfying the residents

“They found him there,” she said, pointing in the cold rain to another stone house a few meters away.

• Author of “Tremembé”Ulysses Campbell responds to criticism and says the series about criminals was designed as a “popular product”.
• From Madonna to Bob Dylan: Music stars who have also made their mark in cinema

The unsolved murder of 70-year-old Giuseppe Montagne, known here as Sansa, was Tor’s third in 15 years. The crime, which occurred in 1995, and its details – an electrical wire around the neck, a decomposing body, a back story involving smugglers and suspicious dealings with a nearby ski resort – attracted a young television reporter, who in 1997 broadcast an investigative report on a Catalan radio station.

He has dedicated himself to history, writing a book in 2005, launching a hugely successful podcast in 2018, and broadcasting a hugely popular true crime docuseries last year.

All this media attention sparked the imagination of unsolved mystery enthusiasts, who turned Tor into Spain’s true crime capital. In the summer, they flock to the city to stay at Sansa’s former home, which serves as a tourist attraction, the Tor Experience, or to occupy cabins for somewhat macabre romantic getaways. In one case, some visitors reenacted the murder and walked around with electrical wires around their necks, according to locals.

A few residents of Tours, an idyllic Catalan town where brown cows wander along streams in the shadow of the mountains, became reluctant characters in the case, their stone homes serving as a grisly location for the Spanish film “The Lonely Murders in the Village.”

The neighbors used to get along well. In 1896, the heads of 13 families declared joint ownership of Mount Tours, one of the highest points in the Pyrenees mountain range and the last strategic stop on the Spanish border before the small principality and tax haven of Andorra. They stipulated that only residents who lived there year-round and kept their home fireplaces burning could claim ownership.

In the 1980s, Sansa and other descendants who remained in the area hired security guards and began charging fees in cash and sometimes whiskey to smugglers transporting cheaper goods from Andorra along the mountain roads. Soon vagabonds, whom locals called “hippies,” were also employed, threatening the unpaid smugglers by rolling giant boulders down the road.

But the biggest source of tension in the mountain village remained the mountain itself.

Sansa envisioned creating a profitable ski resort on its slopes and had already begun negotiations with representatives of Andorra’s ski sector. His main competitor, known locally as El Palanca, wanted to preserve the mountain as a rural paradise grazed by cows and horses.

A decade of feuds and lawsuits culminated in a judge’s decision in 1995 declaring Sansa the sole owner of the mountain. Five months later, he was beaten or strangled, but must have been dragged into the kitchen afterwards. Investigators complained that the place was too dirty to find evidence.

—The problem is that everyone wanted to kill Sansa; “Anyone could be the killer,” said Carles Porta, the journalist behind Tor Projects. He fell in love with Truman Capote’s “In Cold Blood” as a young reporter, and said he found Holcomb, Kansas, in “the middle of nowhere” in Catalonia. Initially, he spent his summer vacation with his wife and children, who weren’t very happy about the idea, while he investigated it. “The true crime genre probably started in Spain with Tor,” he said.

Now, Porta’s face and letters adorn the walls of Hostal Montana, in Allens, Tor’s home municipality, at the foot of the mountain. A quote from Porta’s book, “Tor, the Cursed Mountain,” appears on a bottle of Ratafia, his favorite local spirit. The phrase goes: “All fires are small when they start.”

Mercy Torraloles, 38, who works at Hostal Montaña, the family hotel in Torres, was 8 years old when Sansa’s body was found. She recalled that the police seemed more interested in the food served by her aunt, Thomas, known to Tor’s regulars as Billie, than in solving the crime.

Torraloles acknowledged that “true crime tourism” had helped the family hotel, but said the villagers could no longer afford it. At the height of the true crime season last summer, she said there was no place to park, and the weirdos took over the place. She added: “One of them arrived with a rope tied around his neck.”

Now, with the end of summer, at least the tourists have disappeared.

“Welcome to Tours,” Antonio Zamorano, 38, a local tour guide, said recently as his Jeep pulled toward a suspicious vehicle with foreign license plates and a flat tire on the narrow mountain road. He added that the unprotected border road, surrounded by pine and beech trees that had begun to turn yellow and red, was a smuggling route. He also pointed out the herbs that locals believe end unwanted pregnancies, the horses that will be slaughtered for food, and the grim landmarks.

“This is where they dragged the body,” he said in what was once Sansa’s backyard. “In this house, a hippie committed suicide,” he said down the street, adding to the city’s death toll. A fifth death, as a result of a mysterious fall, “here on the left.”

Far from the city, he pointed to a blue Citroen Saxo that the smugglers had left in the middle of a field. Standing near a boulder labeled “Private Mount Tor,” he posited several theories about Sansa’s murder, describing the frozen hills as a training ground for Spanish terrorists, and staring in deep admiration at the cows and muddy fields around him.

“Magic mushrooms,” he said.

Upon his return to the city, Thomas prepared soup and local meats for a packed room in his home restaurant. A table of Andorian businessmen dusted off bottles of wine and ratafia next to the roaring fireplace.

Joan Clotet, 60, a ski resort executive who has had dealings with Sansa, said Tor missed a huge opportunity because locals were never able to reach an agreement. He said any remaining hope of asylum had disappeared “because of the murder.”

But the murder has generated at least a little work for Porta, who is in Barcelona filming a different Disney investigation into a real-life crime involving abandoned children.

He said that after years of being questioned by supermarket cashiers and taxi drivers about who killed Sansa, new evidence pointed to a hitman who he said “lives in Miami.” He intended to make more press trips there, for what he envisioned would be a fantasy series or even a movie.

“It’s infinite,” Porta said. When asked if his wife would enjoy summer trips to Florida more than trips to Tours, he said they had been separated for more than a decade. -You’re tired of me.

In Tours, residents are also a bit fed up with Porta’s projects. Thomas thought about whether he could donate a portion of his profits to the city so it could have a communications tower.

She said she would gladly give up the huge increase in customers, and even the profits she made from her Tor products, to get everything back to normal. That wouldn’t happen until Porta found the killer, she said, because “people need closure.”

But as she walked out of Sansa’s stone house, past her sleeping dogs, she said the crime would never be solved. When it comes to Sansa’s killer, she’s only certain of one thing.