1731. Copia de carta de Juan Maroto del Río, mesonero, para Francisco García Visera, comerciante y soldado de galeras.

Letter from Juan Maroto del Río, an innkeeper, to Francisco García Visera, a merchant and soldier in the galleys.

Juan Maroto del Río accepts the proposal he was made by the addressee in a previous letter, but he asks him to be sure about all the aspects of the plan before starting.

The defendant of this process was Francisco García Visera, a merchant and a soldier on the galleys. In 1731, he was accused of the crime of witchcraft and superstition by the Inquisition of Cuenca because of various scams he had committed in complicity with a galley slave, the friar Salvador Ortiz. They had proposed the victims of the scams to participate to the finding of a treasure by means of spells. For the realization of these spells they requested certain quantities of gold, silver, precious stones and pearls. The prisoner managed to prove that he did not believe in spells and did not perform magical practices, so eventually he was condemned only for scam. He was forced to abjure de levi in a public auto de fé and sentenced to two hundred lashes and a period of ten years of exile at a distance of ten leagues from Cuenca, Murcia, Cartagena (Murcia), Malaga, Lorca (Murcia), Madrid, Hellín (Albacete), Albacete, Chiva (Valencia) and Almazán (Soria), and to five years of rowing in the galleys.