If you use Facebook to have fun watching memes, and follow a lot of pages (like me), you might have seen some propaganda claiming the Spanish horror movie “Verónica” created by Netflix is one of the scariest movies you will ever watch and it is based on a real life story. I didn’t pay attention to it at first, but after a lot of spamming images on meme pages (maybe sponsored) I decided to watch it, motivated by the fact that a horror movie was finally going to scare me.

This is one of the images I saw on Facebook (credits to whoever created it).

At first I thought they were exaggerating! ... And indeed, they were exaggerating

I don’t want to give spoilers in case anyone wants to watch it, so I will just explain in a nutshell my thoughts on the movie.
‎I don’t know where this trend came from, but the movie was not as scary as some people say it is (not to say it’s not scary at all). The night I decided to watch the movie, I was kind of nervous before watching it because I thought it was going to be the scariest horror story I've ever seen. But Alas! To my misfortune, it was as scary as “Paranormal activity”, just scary for people that get scared easily or children. But besides that, the story was very good, and somewhat sad. I have to admit I almost at the end of the movie. (The disadvantages of falling in love with Sandra Escacena).

So, as this story is based in a real life case, I thought it would be interesting to investigate more about it.

“Vallecas case file”

Fortunately for whoever is reading this and didn’t watch the movie yet, the movie doesn’t follow the same story to the letter. There are a lot of differences not just in the story but in the physical appearance of the characters. For example, Veronica and her mother were thin in the movie, while in real life they were chubby (Marketing? maybe). Her younger brother in the movie is pretty similar to the real one though.

Estefania, real life case ( on theleft), Verónica main character of the movie ( on the Right)

Also, the girl in the movie is named Verónica but in real life her name was Estefania. So a lot of things changed, including the fact that Estefanía was not trying to communicate with her death father by playing the Ouija as showed in the movie, because her father was alive.
If you have Netflix, there’s a movie it produced about a 15-year old girl playing Ouija with her two friends at their catholic school. Verónica (Stefania) was possessed by what seemed to be a demon, causing her to convulse. Afterwards, her two friends were so freaked out they didn’t even want to approach her anymore. An old blind nun of the convent was the only one who knew what was happening and warned Verónica about the dangers of not ending the sessions of Ouija. Because of that, Victoria wanted to close the portal but her friends didn’t want to participate, leading her to play it with her little siblings to end the nightmare they all were living. Her mother didn’t believe anything. After she told her what was happening, her mother thought she was just hallucinating or making it up.
The story was very different in real life. The older, blind sister never existed, Stefania was actually 18 years old, and her mother knew she was possessed--and even looked for religious and psychiatric help many times. My guess is that Netflix thought it would be boring to follow the story to a T, and instead created a movie similar to the ones we are used to watching.I’m not going to talk more about the movie, because I have the feeling that you are going to watch it and spoilers will ruin it all.

Here you can see a real video of the case, when mediums visited Estefania's house 1 year after her death. In the video you can also see how a medium gets "possessed" by one of the spirits.

Conspiracies about the Vallecas case

This is the point I wanted to make, since there are a lot of rumors about the credibility of this case. In 1992, Stefania’s mother was analyzed by a psychologist, and diagnosed with mental disorders and a high capability of imagination (She believed her own lies). In 1996, the family sold the house, and the new occupants said that there was nothing wrong with the house, and there was not paranormal activity in it.
Truth or not, this has been one of the most controversial paranormal cases ever occurred in Spain. And will always be remembered with the movie “Verónica”.

Thank you for reading my review, if you already watched the movie, I would like to read your opinions about it :)