The girls Anna and Olivia will forever have a place in the memory of Santa Cruz de Tenerife, which as of this Tuesday sports a sculpture in their honor and a message of “no resounding” to vicarious violence.
The act of discovery of the sculpture, commissioned by the Fundación Diario de Avisos from the artist Julio Nieto and ceded to the city, was attended by the mother of the little ones, Beatriz Zimmermann, who expressed her gratitude to all the people involved in the search for her daughters, allegedly murdered and thrown into the sea by her ex-partner.
Zimmermann has also thanked the permanent tribute to his girls and has described as a “miracle” the discovery of the body of the eldest, Olivia, precisely on her birthday, June 10, 2021.
A finding that made it possible to practically close a case that shocked the entire Spanish society and put the phenomenon of vicarious violence, that exerted on a daughter or a son to harm the couple, in the spotlight.
The president of the Diario de Avisos Foundation, Lucas Fernández, has asked the authorities present at the event, the presidents of the Canary Islands, Ángel Víctor Torres, of the Cabildo de Tenerife, Pedro Martín, and the mayor of Santa Cruz, José Manuel Bermúdez, as well as the delegate of the Government in the Canary Islands, Anselmo Pestana, who from his field of competence put an end to this “scourge”.
The author of the sculpture, Julio Nieto, explained, visibly moved, that it has been “hard” work, to which he has devoted himself fully in the last six months, and that in it he has tried to reflect a “joyful look”, the of Anna and Olivia, who lightly touch their hands in a gesture “of complicity, of trust”, and also of “childish innocence”.
Nieto thanked Beatriz Zimmermann for “the great lesson she has given us all” for her “fortitude” and her “way of facing something as strong” as the crime of her two girls allegedly at the hands of her father.
The event was enlivened by the choir of white voices from Santa Cruz, who performed the hallelujah by Leonard Cohen and Care for meby Pedro Guerra.
Emotional tribute in Santa Cruz de Tenerife to the girls Olivia and Anna. #Canary Islands shared the pain and rage at the vicarious violence. Then and today, the canaries and the canaries continue next to his family.
We will never forget them. pic.twitter.com/QHbH6fyLHh
– Ángel Víctor Torres Pérez (@avtorresp) October 18, 2022
At its conclusion, the audience applauded Beatriz Zimmermann as she headed to the van that took her to the Santa Cruz seafront avenue with the baby she had with her current partner.
According to the police and judicial reconstruction of the case, everything happened on the same day: the alleged disappearance of the father and daughters and the murder of the girls and the subsequent suicide of the father, but until Olivia’s body was found at the bottom of the sea A month and a half passed of anguish and desperation of a mother, and of a tireless search by land, sea and air.
The father, Tomás Gimeno, had to deliver the little ones on April 27, 2021 after spending the afternoon with them, in accordance with the visitation regimen that he had agreed with his ex-partner.
Over the phone, he excused his lateness that he was having dinner with the girls, when in fact he was carrying out a preconceived plan: murder his own daughters and throw them into the sea before disappearing without a trace.
According to the thesis of one of the judges who instructed the case, he did it to cause Beatriz Zimmermann “the greatest pain”, leaving her for life with the uncertainty about “the fate or destiny” that the little ones had suffered. A case of manual vicarious violence.
