Posted by Perhaps few people know this, but in Valencia there is a cursed building known as “la finca maldita” (the cursed house). It is located at number 1 on Tres Forques Street in the Spanish city. It was built in 1957, and 81 people died in a flood, the first sad sign of what was to come.
In post-war Valencia, as the city sought to expand, an anonymous residential building was erected at number 1 Avenida Tres Forques. Its construction in 1957 coincided with one of the most serious natural tragedies in local history: after two days of torrential rain, the Turia River burst its banks, flooding the lower districts of the city and claiming 81 lives.
Many interpreted this event as a sinister omen for the newly built palace. The fury of the waters did not directly touch the building, but its fate seemed marked by an aura of doom. Eleven years later, the apparent tranquility of Tres Forques 1 would be shattered by the first of a long series of bloody events.
1968 – The mystery of the vedette Gracia Imperio
On November 11, 1968, the silence of the Tres Forques building was shattered by a chilling discovery. Within the walls of apartment 78, costume designer José Luis Martínez found the lifeless bodies of the famous vedette Gracia Imperio and her former partner, Antonio González. The scene that greeted investigators was as dramatic as it was enigmatic: the gas was on, there were no signs of violence, two lives cut short in what could have been a suicide, a domestic accident, or a perfectly orchestrated murder.
Gracia Imperio was no ordinary artist. The undisputed queen of the theaters of Ruzafa, the neighborhood then nicknamed “the Broadway of Valencia,” her fame and charisma made her an icon of the city’s nightlife. It was precisely this status that made her end all the more shocking, shrouded in a mystery that even the police investigation failed to unravel. The three official hypotheses—suicide, accident, or murder—remained equally plausible, fueling theories and legends in the decades that followed.
That tragic November, the Tres Forques building made its debut in Valencia’s crime news.
The fate of the “queen of the night’s” brother-in-law
Between the 1970s and 1980s, a new tragedy shook the building. The brother-in-law of Mercedes Viana, a successful businesswoman who owned the legendary Mogambo Club and 11 apartments in the building, was found lifeless at the foot of the stairwell. The investigation never clarified whether it was an accident, a suicide or something more sinister. The victim, linked to one of the most prominent figures in Valencia’s nightlife, turned the case into an unsolved mystery.
A party that ended in tragedy
The 1990s saw another tragedy waiting to happen. An 18-year-old boy died of a lethal drug overdose during his birthday party on the eighth floor. His parents, who were away that evening, learned of the news when they returned home.
The little siblings and the cursed window
Perhaps the most heartbreaking chapter. Two little siblings, aged 4 and 2, left unattended for a few minutes, were playing and jumping on the bed in a fourth-floor bedroom. The window, inexplicably open, became a gateway to the abyss. When the little girl fell into the void, her older brother desperately tried to grab her, falling himself. The girl died instantly, the boy after days of agony in hospital.
Some time later, a man was found dead inside his home after his mother, unable to communicate with him, raised the alarm.
2012 – The murder of the Brazilian prostitute
On March 1, 2012, the Tres Forques building witnessed one of its most brutal episodes. A man, a resident of the fifth floor and known for his drug addiction, called a 32-year-old Brazilian prostitute, offering her money for her services. What should have been a normal transaction turned into a nightmare.
After consuming wine and cocaine, the man, following an argument and in a fit of inexplicable violence, began beating the woman with unprecedented ferocity. He repeatedly hit her in the face, stabbed her several times, and finally strangled her to death. But the horror did not end there: in an attempt to dispose of the body, he dragged the victim to the stairwell and threw her to her death.
When neighbors, alarmed by strange noises, called the police, the murderer even tried to resist arrest with violence. Faced with the evidence, the court sentenced him to 15 years in prison.
The latest victim, for now, is a man found dead in his apartment on March 11, 2015. Neighbors had alerted the authorities to the strong smell coming from the man’s apartment.
A building marked by misfortune
Tres Forques 1 remains a place where real tragedies mix with urban legends. So many unexplained deaths in a few decades are too many to be mere coincidences, but too few to prove a real curse. Today, the building continues to be inhabited by those who, ignoring the past or defying it, prefer to live without superstition. The truth? Perhaps it lies somewhere in between: not a cursed building, but an unfortunate theater of human drama that time has turned into myth.
