The Civil Guard has arrested Laura García de Viedma this Thursday, former abbess of the Belorado monastery, for her alleged involvement in the sale of assets belonging to the artistic heritage of the convent. The agents accessed the monastery in the morning, despite the attempts of the former nuns to prevent their entry. According to ABC, the investigation remains open and García de Viedma will spend the night in official facilities. She is accused of an alleged crime of misappropriation of historical heritage assets.
The judicial situation becomes complicated
The arrest comes just one week after the complex judicial situation of the schismatic group began to clear up. The delay strategy that the former nuns have used from the beginning—exhausting deadlines, appealing every resolution, and escalating to all possible instances—has turned against them. In recent weeks, unfavorable resolutions to their interests have followed one after another.
The most recent was the notification, a week ago, of the eviction lawsuit for precarious possession filed before the Court of First Instance No. 1 of Bilbao. The judicial action is directed against “the unknown occupants who may be found in the Santa Clara de Orduña monastery”, a property acquired in 2020 by the former nuns, but whose payment was never made.
The community is now settling in Orduña
Currently, most of the group that protagonized the schism is living in the Orduña monastery, where they moved the elderly sisters days before the trial for the eviction of Belorado, a process they lost and which they now maintain on appeal.
The five oldest nuns—between 86 and 100 years old—belong to the legitimate community of Belorado, as they did not participate in the schism nor were they excommunicated. None of them had lived in Orduña before, the monastery bought by the former nuns in 2020 and whose payment was left unfulfilled.