The Murder of Isabel Carrasco

The attack in León

On the afternoon of May 12, 2014, Isabel Carrasco was walking across a pedestrian footbridge over the Bernesga River in León when she was shot. Carrasco was president of the Provincial Council of León and a prominent local political figure. Police detained Montserrat González and her daughter, Triana Martínez, shortly after the killing.

Montserrat González later admitted that she fired the shots. A third woman, León municipal police officer Raquel Gago, became part of the investigation after the murder weapon was found in her possession and later handed to police.

The investigation and the alleged grievance

The prosecution argued that the killing had been planned in advance and grew out of a long-running conflict involving Triana Martínez’s professional relationship with Carrasco. Defense arguments disputed important aspects of that narrative and attempted to separate Triana and Gago from the planning of the homicide.

The final criminal judgments did not treat the three defendants identically. Montserrat González and Triana Martínez were ultimately convicted as authors of the murder, while Raquel Gago was convicted as an accomplice. That distinction matters: describing all three simply as identical perpetrators would misstate the final legal outcome.

The first trial

The jury trial was held in the Provincial Court of León in early 2016. The proceedings examined the planning of the attack, surveillance of Carrasco, the firearm, the defendants’ movements and communications, and the role each woman played before and after the shooting.

On March 10, 2016, the first-instance judgment imposed 22 years in prison on Montserrat González and 20 years on Triana Martínez. Raquel Gago initially received five years for concealment and illegal possession of a weapon after the presiding judge’s legal classification differed from the jury’s view of her involvement.

Appeals changed Raquel Gago’s conviction

The case did not end with the first judgment. In July 2016, the High Court of Justice of Castilla y León revised Gago’s legal responsibility and sentenced her to 12 years as an accomplice to the murder, bringing the ruling into line with the jury’s factual findings.

The parties then appealed to Spain’s Supreme Court. On December 15, 2016, the Supreme Court confirmed the 22-year sentence for Montserrat González and the 20-year sentence for Triana Martínez. It also increased Gago’s term from 12 to 14 years by adding two years for illegal possession of the murder weapon.

What the Supreme Court established

When the Supreme Court published its full reasoning later that month, it described Gago as an accomplice who had accepted the criminal plan, while keeping the legal distinction between complicity and authorship. The court also upheld the convictions of Montserrat González and Triana Martínez for murder.

The final outcome is therefore more precise than the shorthand often used in retellings of the case: Montserrat and Triana received 22 and 20 years respectively as authors of the murder; Gago received 12 years for complicity plus two years for illegal weapons possession, for a total of 14 years.

Current status

The convictions remain the governing criminal outcome. In January 2025, reporting from the Asturias prison where Montserrat González and Triana Martínez were serving their sentences said both women had expressed remorse for the first time. In November 2025, a prison-supervision judge authorized Triana’s first ordinary temporary leave after more than eleven years in custody, subject to conditions. A temporary prison leave is not the same as release from the sentence, and reporting at that time said she continued serving the 20-year term.

For editorial purposes, Crime by Region therefore classifies the homicide as solved and adjudicated. Later prison developments concern sentence administration, not unresolved responsibility for Carrasco’s death.

Why the case remains significant

The murder drew national attention because a serving provincial president was killed in public and because the judicial process had to untangle three different levels of criminal participation. It also became a useful example of why early headlines should not be treated as a substitute for final judgments: Gago’s legal status changed substantially between the first-instance ruling, the regional appeal and the Supreme Court decision.