In the Montealto neighborhood of La Coruña, in the early 70s, everyone knew them as Mero and Chicha. They were already parents of two children, Ramón, three years old, and Baldomero, four months old, when the young couple decided to enjoy the honeymoon they had not had after their wedding.
Baldomero Barral Fernández was 24 years old in 1974. María Josefina Pérez Martínez, barely 21 years old. They were two children who grew up very quickly, like many others of that generation. They got married on October 4, 1970, but could not go on a trip. They did not have enough money.
Three years later, they would win a group, in the 1972/1973 championship season, and their lives would take a 180 degree turn. They bought an apartment and opened a business, the Los Ángeles confectionery in La Coruña, and organized the long-awaited trip.
Josefina’s mother, who lived in the United Kingdom, went to Galicia to look after the children. The destination had been chosen for some time, and it was none other than Madrid, the city where everything happened in Spain at the end of the dictatorship.
Together they visited the Retiro Park, walked through the center of the capital and visited the Puerta del Sol. On September 13, 1974, they had planned to escape to see the Royal Palace of Aranjuez, but they finally decided to leave it for another day. It was by chance that they chose the Rolando cafeteria to eat.
Interior of the cafeteria after debris removal.
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The detonation occurred at 2:30 p.m. on September 13, half a century ago. A powerful bomb reinforced with shells exploded in the cafeteria’s dining room. Baldomero’s lifeless body was the first recovered by firefighters. It was transferred directly to the Institute of Forensic Anatomy. María Josefina admitted the body to the Francisco Franco Sanitary City. They were not identified until their bag was found in the rubble.
This honeymoon ended with a major misfortune, which marks the 50th anniversary of this Friday. In this attack, the terrorist group ETA murdered 13 people. the book Dynamite, lunatics and lies historians Gaizka Fernández Soldevilla and Ana Escauriaza (Tecnos, 2024), supported by the Memorial Center for Victims of Terrorism, describes how ETA, with the help of activist Genoveva Forest and playwright Alfonso Sastre, decided to place explosive devices in this location because many police officers from the General Directorate of Security frequented it, the building in Puerta del Sol where the headquarters of the Community of Madrid is now located.
The worst attack in Madrid
The book tells how it was the third time Bernard Oyarzábal Bidegorri and María Lourdes Cristóbal Elhorga They went to that dining room in a month. On the day of the attack, they were afraid that someone would discover their plans, so the ETA member pretended not to feel well and asked the waiter for an IV. When he went to the bar, the ETA members disappeared, after activating the bomb they had hidden in a briefcase.
The couple who were victims of the attack on their wedding day four years earlier.
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The attack left 70 people injured. Only one of the victims was a police officer. Félix Ayuso Pinel would remain in convalescence for years due to the serious injuries caused by the attack. He died in January 1977 from injuries sustained in an attack that also injured 70 other people.
The Victims of Terrorism Memorial Center is hosting an exhibition about this terrorist attack at its headquarters in Vitoria. There you can see what the artifacts made by the group looked like. The bomb consisted of 5 to 8 kilos of 2E-C rubber dynamite. It had been reinforced with shrapnel to intensify the damage. Baldomero and Josefina were too close to the site of the explosion to survive.
This was the first indiscriminate attack in ETA’s long history, the bloodiest ever to occur in Madrid. However, as they have done on many occasions, the gang killed and lied. Instead of claiming responsibility for the crime, they blamed the far right and the Franco regime. No one went to prison for the murder. The organization only acknowledged its responsibility in 2018.
The boxer’s son
Those who saw his father in action told Baldomero Barral Jr.: Barral Grouper for his friends, that no one ever touched his face in the ring. Their wedding photos prove it. Not a single mark on his face. “You wouldn’t even say he was a boxer,” his son proudly exclaims. “He was good. He had great mastery of the sword, they always told me he dodged very well.” After proclaiming himself Galician champion of lightweight and featherweight, he came to apply for the Spanish Championship. He was even pre-selected for the 1968 Olympic Games in Mexico.
However, he was barely 20 years old when he realized that this was not a way to earn a living. He decided to leave professional boxing with a record of 10 wins, three losses and three draws. From that moment on, he dedicated himself to his family, the one he had formed with María Josefina Pérez Martínez. It would be then that they would start working in different companies, win the lottery, travel and be murdered.
The explosives that were used in the attack.
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Mero Barral is a photographer and has worked for many years, especially in sports information. Neither he nor his brother have ever received help.We are forgotten victims. Only one person in the state has tried to help us during all this time, and that is Belén Pulgar (General Director of Victims’ Care and Access to Justice). There was financial compensation at the time, but it came too late. What I have always thought is that my parents were killed by ETA, but the state let my grandparents die.”
“I have listened for as long as I can remember: victims here, victims there. And also my grandfather who worked until he was 75 without stopping to support us. It is something hard to believe. How “It is hard to believe that this government has reached an agreement with ETA to be able to govern,” he criticizes.
Baldomero Barral, when he was a boxer.
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The policies of the current government and the strategy of pact with EH Bildu, the heir to the terrorist group, excite him. “What the PSOE has done has opened a wound that had been closed for a long time. What the PSOE has done has opened a wound that had been closed for a long time. They have betrayed us and sold us out. Sánchez would never govern if they did not make an agreement with Bildu. In the second legislature, “all of Spain has already seen what the PSOE is capable of doing to govern.”
To this day, neither Baldomero nor his brother have a single memory of their parents. They knew them through the memories of their grandparents, who took care of them until they were older, and the neighbors in the Montealto neighborhood, in the center of A Coruña. “When I was little, they told me that they would give out cakes to neighbors who were going through a difficult time. We didn’t talk about it much because we didn’t want my grandmother to relive everything that had happened. The subject was never discussed. We really talked about it at home because we were protecting ourselves from the pain.”
Oyarzábal and Elhorga never paid for their crimes. The perpetrators of the massacre continued to live all these years in France, without looking back. And the tragedy was forgotten, as were the victims and their families.
