'The Predator of Seville' Recap: What Happens To Manuel Blanco?

The Predator of Seville is the latest true-crime documentary series streaming on Netflix, bringing to the screen the atrocious acts of a Spanish man named Manuel Blanco, the owner and manager of a tour operating company in Seville. Blanco has been accused of sexually assaulting and behaving inappropriately with numerous women, mostly American students in Seville, over a span of many years. The documentary takes us deep into some of the cases against him, narrated by the victims themselves, and the court trial that followed, making it an interesting but harrowing experience.

What happened to Gabrielle Vega?

The daughter of a first-generation American citizen of Spanish roots, Gabrielle Vega was encouraged by her parents to travel to Spain and study there for some time simply to reconnect with her parental family heritage and Spanish identity after college. Although her grandparents hailed from Asturias, Gabrielle decided to move to Seville, as her father found the city to be the best place for her to learn the purest form of the Spanish language. Thus began Gabrielle’s long but exciting journey to Europe, and from the very beginning, she felt eager and enthusiastic to explore other parts of the continent. Since she had just moved to the southernmost regions of Europe, the prospect of traveling to northern Africa and exploring a totally different culture and geography also kept her very excited. Thus, when she learned that a trusted tour company among the American students living in Spain, named Discover Excursions, regularly conducted trips to Morocco, Gabrielle immediately joined on one such trip.

Convinced by the very professional website of the company and the genuinely good reviews of it that she got from people she knew, Gabrielle, and so she trusted Discover Excursions to provide her a safe and enriching journey, and she joined the trip with her two friends at the time, Ashley and Nicole. She recalls how most of the trip was absolutely amazing, as she got to learn about Moroccan food and culture and was thoroughly impressed by the experience. However, incidents from the very last night of the trip totally changed her perception and left her traumatized for life. Since Morocco was not considered a safe place after dark for solo female travelers, the guides working for Discover Excursions asked everyone to stay put inside the hotel and spend time at the bar on the top floor of the establishment if they wanted to. Following this advice, Gabrielle, Ashley, and Nicole planned on spending the evening at the bar when they were approached by Manuel Blanco.

The main guide for the trip, and also the owner and manager of the company, Manuel Blanco, had seemed like a friendly and goofy man to Gabrielle till that point in time, who was enthusiastic in showing the travelers around and ensuring that they enjoyed themselves. Therefore, when Blanco suggested that the girls return to their room and he join them with a bottle of champagne, none of Gabrielle or her friends seemed to mind. But as the group continued hanging out and drinking in the hotel room till late at night, things started to get a bit awkward, as Blanco became overly flirtatious and also started to make suggestive proposals. Confused about whether he had any ill intent or if it was simply cultural differences that were making her feel odd, Gabrielle did not do anything about his acts. Feeling tired from the day’s hectic schedule and also dizzy from the alcohol, she went to sleep early, on a cot in the same room, while Ashley and Nicole continued drinking.

According to what she remembers and narrates, Gabrielle then woke up some time later and needed to use the washroom when she found Blanco, Ashley, and Nicole in a compromising situation together in the shower. Without saying anything, she returned to the cot before the three left the washroom, and she finally could go in. But as Gabrielle sat down on the toilet, without locking the door of the washroom, Blanco walked in with no clothes on, forced himself upon her, and hit her on the side of her head, which instantly made her lose consciousness. After Gabrielle woke up the next morning, feeling extremely sore and hurting, she pieced together the events from the previous night and realized that she had been raped by the tour guide she had trusted so much. However, there was nothing she could do yet, as the trip was ending that very day and the group had to return to Spain, but the trauma and grief obviously stayed as she came to terms with what had happened with her.

Gabrielle could not initially tell anyone about the incident, even months later when she visited home in the US, but she could no longer keep the matter buried in her for long, and she eventually told her parents about what had happened. The parents, shocked and angered, obviously wanted to give their daughter whatever support she needed, especially with involving the law. However, Gabrielle was clear about her stance—she did not want to legally pursue the matter or bring any charges against her perpetrator, simply because she was too traumatized and broken by the whole experience. She did not want to recount what had happened with her and go through the difficulty of pursuing a legal case against a Spanish national for a crime he committed in Morocco. As evasive as it seemed to be, Gabrielle Vega just wanted to forget all that had happened with her and move on from the trauma to return to her usual life.

Why did Gabrielle change her stance regarding the incident?

2 years later, a woman named Elizabeth Kelly was working on an installation project at Florida State University where she was trying to get random people to talk about the best and worst experiences of their lives, essentially trying to prove how such significant experiences shape one’s personality. Gabrielle found out about Elizabeth’s project from social media and agreed to contribute to it, sending her a voice note about her own experiences, mentioning the horrid incident from Morocco in it. The sheer mention of a perverse tour guide in Morocco made Elizabeth guess the name of the tour company as well as the name of the perpetrator, for she had heard a similar account from a close friend, who had been assaulted by Manuel Blanco as well. 

When Elizabeth shared the details of the account she had heard from her friend with Gabrielle, the latter got in touch with the other victim, and from her, she learned of two more victims who had been assaulted in a similar manner. Very soon, Gabrielle realized that the same man who had assaulted her had done the same to numerous other women, most of them American students who were living in Spain and had gone to either Morocco or Portugal with Discover Excursions. This was enough for her to change her stance regarding her experience, and despite spending years suppressing it, she now decided to publicly write about it. In numerous posts made on multiple social media platforms, Gabrielle wrote what had happened to her, mentioning Blanco’s name along with that of his company, and warned women of the predator that was roaming free in Seville.

Using her family contacts with the Spanish general consul in Miami, she soon took the matter to a level of authority. Although the diplomat obviously requested her to not make the matter public, as it would hurt Spain’s reputation, Gabrielle took the first chance at a media interview, as her intention was to prevent other women from becoming helpless victims. In 2018, she appeared on ‘The Today Show,’ hosted by Megyn Kelly, and opened up about her experience, and photos of Manuel Blanco were also shown during the presentation. This opened the floodgates for numerous other women, who quickly started reaching out to Gabrielle, informing her that they too had been attacked and harassed by the same man. There were some who had narrowly escaped his advances, but their experiences had left them traumatized for life. Within a short while, Gabrielle Vega understood that it should really be her life’s purpose to document all the victims’ accounts in a highly detailed manner and do something about it.

How did the ‘Prince of Seville’ take attack his victims?

Manuel Blanco, who also made an alternate version of his name, as Manuel White, simply translating his Spanish surname to English, was a popular face in the party scene in Seville. He would show up at any party or gathering where American students came to socialize, almost inserting them into their lives subtly and befriending them. He knew the organizers, servers, and bartenders at these events and used his extensive network to get to know the young American women better. He also sometimes targeted women from other parts of Spain by giving them free tickets to tours organized by his company, always giving the females such privileges and ignoring the men. This was because he had ill intentions in mind, essentially wanting to get some of the women in compromised situations and forcing them to get intimate with him. In some instances, Blanco would also bring the women to his home, posing as their good friend to then assault them when he could. There are suggestions that in almost every instance, he possibly mixed some drug in his victim’s drink to make them groggy and feel ill, although such a charge has never been officially brought against him, let alone be proven. The man who sometimes cheekily claimed himself to be the ‘Prince of Seville’ turned out to be a manipulative predator on the prowl for young foreigner women.

Did Blanco commit a murder as well?

Shockingly, one of the many women who had been targeted by Manuel Blanco was also Lauren Bajorek, a 21-year-old American student who ended up meeting a tragic end. According to official reports, Lauren had apparently accidentally fallen from the 10th-story apartment of Blanco in Seville and lost her life from the grave injuries. On the fateful night in 2015, Lauren and three of her friends were out dining at a local restaurant, where Blanco joined them, as they knew him from their trip to Portugal a few days back. Blanco offered to take them around to some clubs so that they could spend more time together, and a few hours later, Lauren and another friend, Sarah, ended up visiting his apartment in a heavily drunken state. 

According to the accounts of Blanco and Sarah, Lauren had apparently decided to spend some time by herself in a jacuzzi tub on the apartment balcony while the two of them went in for some water. By the time they returned, Lauren had tipped off from a corner of the balcony, which did not have any safety rails, and instantly died. But a number of minor details about the matter make it very suspicious. Firstly, the jacuzzi tub did not have any water, meaning that Lauren’s body was not wet, which could have made her slip and fall off. Secondly, while Lauren (found in the post-mortem examination) and Sarah were found to have high amounts of alcohol in their blood, there was simply none found in Blanco’s body, which suggested that he possibly consumed very little or no alcohol throughout the night. Although the most probable theory is that Lauren had fallen off the balcony trying to avoid Blanco’s advances and attacks, since she had told friends about how she did not find him to be very harmless and had died because of him, no official charges have ever been brought against Blanco in this case.

Has Manuel Blanco been punished?

Ultimately, Gabrielle Vega decided to legally deal with the situation and charge Manuel Blanco for his crimes. Her step to go public with her story and then her appearance on ‘The Today Show’ had already messed with Blanco’s setup so much that he had to shut down his Discover Excursions business overnight and possibly go into hiding for a few days. When approached by some local media outlets, Blanco claimed that the women were only trying to defame him and harm his business’ reputation. Although Gabrielle started to taste victory from this very moment, the legal situation was such that the matter could no longer be tried in a criminal court, and the civil court had to be moved instead. Multiple women were prepared to testify against Blanco, but the court ruled that only Gabrielle and two other victims, Hayley and Carly, would be granted the chance to present their accounts.

During the trial, the two women who had also been in the hotel room with Gabrielle at the time of her assault, Ashley and Nicole, were called upon to testify via video call. Unfortunately, both of them stated that they did not notice anything strange taking place and that as far as they could remember about a night so long ago, especially when they were pretty drunk, Gabrielle and Manuel had entered the washroom to get intimate on their own volition. The reason for such a testimony remains a mystery, although if Gabrielle’s account is to be believed, then Ashley and Nicole were possibly more desperate to protect their own reputations and hide the fact that they had been showering with Manuel together at one point. Manuel defended himself by stating that although he did have intimate relations with some women while running the tour business, he did not even remember Gabrielle, and everything she was claiming was fake. 

At the end of the trial, it seemed to Gabrielle that she had lost the battle because of the testimonies of Ashley and Nicole, which went totally against her claims. However, when the verdict was announced a few weeks later, she and numerous other women breathed a sigh of relief, as Manuel Blanco was declared guilty and sentenced to 6 years in prison for sexually assaulting Gabrielle Vega and a further two and a half years for assaulting Carly and Hayley. The documentary ends with a bleak reminder that the sentence against Blanco is not final, as he has already appealed the conviction to the Supreme Court in the country. Nonetheless, what Gabrielle has achieved is no small feat, having stood up for numerous other women who had been subjected to the same horrors as her by the Predator of Seville.

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