"Spain’s first Twitter hate-crime arrest was that of a 19-year-old student in Valencia who greeted Carrasco’s death with the tweet: “That’s the way! Kill them all.” The applause that greeted the murder in certain quarters owed much to the mindset of Spaniards who were fed up with politicians lining their pockets while they themselves scrabbled for jobs, had homes repossessed or coped with dramatic falls in income, according to Ángela Domínguez. Carrasco’s tyrannical reputation – and the corruption rumours – had helped make her a target. “Part of society saw it as an almost necessary ritual,” she said. “There is a shared responsibility.”

Although people in León complained privately about Carrasco, few had dared to confront her. Perhaps they feared that, without a pistol in their hand, they were always bound to lose. Rosa Seijas, who sued over the fixed exam system, sees a cowed society that has accepted cronyism as inevitable. “Everyone complains, but nobody does anything,” she said. “They just say that this is the way things work. In fact, all they want is to find a way to get their own offspring a civil service job.” Carrasco’s architect friend, Jesús Ramos, says that the poisoned atmosphere in León reflected what he calls Spain’s “familist” society – where a weak welfare state provides no real safety net. “Here, your family looks after you,” he said. That makes cronyism inevitable, even virtuous. In this case, it primed a mother to kill."

The Murder of Isabel Carasco