This week, at Zaballa prison in Alava, the champagne was flowing freely. It is not a rhetorical or metaphorical figure that I am writing. A few years ago, not many, a civil guard told this columnist that the very day Benemérita Barracks in Dantzarinea was machine-gunned for the umpteenth time by a band of ETA undesirables, we learned that in certain Spanish prisons, certainly those closest to the Basque Country and Navarre, champagne was flowing freely because, as the writer wrote ETA in its Zutabé: “…the organization continually shows that it continues its activity.”
Today in Zaballa, after visiting other prisons in the country, the second ETA criminal who committed the most murders in his life awaits his next freedom: first, the Frenchman who contests his position, Henri Parotresponsible for around sixty attacks; secondly, Francisco Javier García Gaztelu, Txapote. From the outset, I tell how sometimes chance, luck or chance worked in favor of the dismantling of the terrorist group. This happened in Bidart and also with Txapote and his arrest on February 22, 2001.
It turns out that the Spanish police had received a complaint some time previously from an industrialist from Irun who had had a cutting machine stolen and, during this operation of searching and capturing the thieves, a thief appeared suddenly: Ibon Muñoa, who ended up confessing that he was little less than a person’s favorite e-mail murderous colleague who resided, without anyone disturbing him, in Anglet (France). Moreover, this Muñoa was the snitch who, years before, in 1997, had offered García Gaztelu’s group all the details of the life of Ermua’s advisor, Miguel Angel Blanco.
Txapote was arrested in Anglet while he I was quietly having an aperitif on a terrace and, with him, the Forces of Order of France and Spain put an end to the hegemony of this subject which had replaced Kantaouri, Arizcuren Ruiz, as the operational leader of all the murderers in the gang. When Txapote gained this power, once another historical power was taken away from him, Antza. Gaztelu has already presented a careful service record for ETA.
He was born in Bilbao in 1996 and, almost as a teenager, he enrolled in the borroka kalethe permanent disorder in the streets designed by terrorists to sow panic and chaos in the main cities of the Basque Country and Navarre.
Like in his hometown kale had little success, Txapote moved to San Sebastiánwhere he committed every misdeed imaginable. The bibliography presented by the apprentice did not seem foreign to the management of the ETA and it soon placed him as a distinguished member of one of the groups (order they were called) the bloodiest in history: the San Sebastian.
Txapote rose and rose through the ranks of the rebels, many of whom adored his a dizzying cruelty, also experienced by the many times he opposed the abandonment of pistols, like Álvarez Santacristina, and starting, with Otegi, another poly-milli renegade, the path of political subversion.
Let us not waste time or writing recalling all the attacks of which this madman from Bilbao was the main author; just to say that no one was saved: from a socialist, Fernando Buesawhom he ordered killed in his capacity as provost of the band, Miguel Angel Blanco to whom he fired two shots at close range in a forest to carry out his threat to commit the crime, if the Aznar government did not agree to release his colleagues imprisoned in different Spanish trullos. From these days of horror, we remember all the most notable incidents; However, two very current aspects have not been emphasized.
In the freedom rallies of Miguel Ángel Blanco, the role played by the Lehendakari of the time, José Antonio Ardanza, particularly stood out. Personally, I remember this warning to terrorists: “We know who you are, we know where you are and we are coming for you. » Exemplary: twenty-seven years later, the one who is still president of Euskadi Buru BatzarAndoni Ortúzar, laughingly welcomed the initiative to release the prisoners in the worst, most bloody conditions. Something that produces vomiting similar to that caused by Txapote while contemplating the murder he had just committed. This Ortúzar is a despicable subject, of whom many Penevistas are ashamed.
The second aspect is also of extraordinary interest: at that time, Ermua, a dormitory town for immigrants from the peninsula, was governed by the PSOE activist, Carlos Totorica, a wonderful character who led all the movements in support of Blanco. Today, the PSOE continues to exercise the function of mayor, but Bildu, the coalition heir to this Herri Batasuna persecuted in Ermua until his expulsion from the city, has four councilors, two more than the PP, it is i.e. the same as was the case in 1997. What a shame!
Something reminiscent of this phrase from Camus: “The destiny of martyrs is to be forgotten or manipulated”. Today, regarding Spain, I could add this: “…and the victims will be harmed.” Txapote does not have a city, he is from Bilbao, where it is unlikely that he will be received with txistu set to music Sword Dancebut Otegi surely finds room for a tribute to his most distinguished activist. Sánchez thus becomes complicit in this horrible incident; in just seven years of government, he will have whitewashed the entire murderous tribe that transformed Spain from 1960 to 2014 into a huge cemetery.
In this type of operation, there is always a main actor, in this case Bildu, other secondary ones, the Leninists of Sumar, a tap-dancing idiot, the PNV, and an essential friend, Pedro Sánchez. Twenty-three of the ETA members who will be released from prison as soon as possible have committed blood-curdling crimes, but right now they are the henchmen of the national government.
Gaztelu, the young man from Jarrai-Hanka-Segi, a character without conscience, is already a collaborator and beneficiary of Sánchez’s decisions. Here in Spain, the victims have cried again and the Popular Party has enough to repair its enormous error, but make no mistake, those of Feijóo have no other fault than their inanity, and the people in general add a another reason, no longer to send Sánchez into outer darkness, but to lead him directly to the bench. He is the partner of a murderer.
