He has a name made up of a soap opera and surely with his life a screenwriter would draw a soap opera. Manuel Reinaldo Méndez Serrano (Toledo, 1964) has just published his first detective novel, “No short, long view and bad milk”, which is also “the unofficial motto of the Civil Guard, invented by these couples who traveled through Spain foot”. ” This is explained by this 60-year-old second lieutenant, now in active reserve, who entered the Úbeda Meritorious Corps Academy at the age of 18 without performing compulsory military service because he is the son of pillory became captain.
The novel tells the daily life of a judicial police team of the Civil Guard, whose mission is to support the administration of justice through methods of action and operations. The plot begins in the Community of Madrid, where Officers are to investigate a robbery with intimidation and sexual assault at the home of a concerned member of the Congress of Deputies.. A circumstance that ends up complicating the investigation, explains Manuel, who defines himself as “a guerrilla” and who only uses analog cell phones. “I have four identical ones from my years of activity because I was fed up with companies,” he admits.
At the age of 19, he chose Barcelona for his first professional destination because, among other reasons, the adventures of Pepe Carvalho took place there, an atypical private detective created by his namesake. Manuel Vázquez Montablán. The following year, its entire promotion was sent to the Basque provinces and Navarre to strengthen the workforce. “There were more than a thousand Civil Guards and I was in the Vizcaya command. These were difficult times, the so-called “years of lead”. In two of the four units he was in, he suffered attacks. “In two of them, ETA murdered three colleagues with a car bomb. And in the other two he threw Jotake grenades against the Guernica and Las Arenas barracks. In Guernica, there were no injuries, although the two grenades thrown with a homemade mortar went through the wall of the single staff dormitory. Meanwhile, in Las Arenas, the grenade hit the barracks door, “seriously injuring the 9-year-old daughter of the brigade who commanded this post.”
An “indelible” memory
That his three companions were murdered deeply shocked Manuel because he had performed the same service dozens of times, what is known as rondines: plainclothes surveillance with a camouflaged car outside the barracks. “And he had crossed the same streets where the two car bombs exploded. “It was a lottery: it was not my turn but theirs.”
“It’s an indelible memory,” he remarks of Lieutenant Ignacio Mateu Istúriz. He had spoken to him a few days before his assassination in an attack at the Arechavaleta barracks, in Biscay, when he had stepped on a bomb trap with his partner, guard Adrián González. Mateu, a myth of the GAR – an elite unit of the Civil Guard – was the son of the magistrate José Francisco Mateu, whom ETA had also killed. “This is the only case in its bloody history where the terrorist group murdered a father and son in two different attacks,” Manuel says.
He requested leave after seven years in the Basque Country, at the age of 27 and as a first corporal. He left “burned, bitter, resentful” for not having been able to find a solution to everything he had seen; underlines “the loneliness we suffered”. “If a body was seen on the ground, people would change sidewalks. I have attended several funerals and we were almost the guards watching over the deceased. There was not even a priest to provide a church. The chapel was installed at the seat of civil government and not in the city where they were murdered; and quickly and running, they took them to their home country and that was it,” he says.
With the two million pesetas he had saved, he dedicated himself to traveling across America for two years. He thus realized a dream he had since he was a child. He flew to New York and flew through 20 countries in 20 months without boarding another plane. Trains, boats, buses, taxis, on foot… He even boarded a cargo ship in the port of Panama to cross to Colombia, where he entered illegally, without a visa. “It was complicated and I was afraid”he summarizes, because he crossed alone places infested with drug traffickers and paramilitaries.
When the money ran out, he returned to Spain. Of course, with hepatitis which caused him to spend time in the hospital. He then joined the Civil Guard, refused to return to the Basque Country and was stationed in the courts of the Plaza de Castilla, in Madrid, for three years. “A single day in a dungeon,” he said, “is like staying there for five or six. “Everyone comes out emaciated.”
She was responsible for the security of the building and the main prisoners, such as Blanca Rodríguez-Porto, wife of Luis Roldán: “She asked me, please, not to handcuff her and I replied that I would not couldn’t make an exception. , because the area “was full of journalists”. He was impressed Francisco García Escalero, the serial killer known as “El Matamendigos”, and he even gave Jimmy Giménez-Arnau a razor when he left the dungeons. “I had one and I gave it to him. “This man was vain.”
He was promoted to sergeant and his next assignment was the tax unit at the Reina Sofía airport in Tenerife, where he controlled “hot flights”, particularly from Venezuela. “It’s sad because by the time they got off the plane and were waiting at the conveyor belt to collect their suitcases, we knew who was bringing drugs.”he says. “They all had the same profile, with new clothes, a little x on their passport and they didn’t know the name of the island they were going to. Many were unfortunate people, poor devils, who did it to earn money with the pass. The mule drivers were impressive, as they swallowed up to 120 acorns of cocaine, and this encouraged them because perhaps in prison they would find work.
From the Canary Islands to Robledo de Chavela (Madrid), already post commander. This job “is not paid in small towns. He had a work phone and was available 24 hours a day, days off did not exist. “It was both challenging and rewarding.” “With the mayor and the priest, you are part of the power in place”says Manuel, who compares it to small judicial parties, where “the judge is everyone’s apprentice, no one’s master.”
Then, a decade in civilian clothes in the Escorial Judicial Police, “by far the best experience in the Civil Guard”, but at the expense of his family, who lived in the province of Toledo. “I had to take my children to the body disposal because I had no one to leave them with. Or keep them in the office because my wife couldn’t. He’s investigated everything from crimes to bank scams to sexual assaults. And also endure the “squirt” of controls for making a mistake.. “We recovered 17 cigarette butts during a theft and I had to respond in writing because there was a typo: when writing the cigarette brand L&M, I put a hyphen instead of &”, he remembers. Even if the work of the Judicial Police has been multiplied by four, the numbers have not increased for 40 years.
In El Escorial, Manuel was selected to become a professor at the Federal Police Academy of San Luis Potosí for two months. In the Mérida Initiative, for the fight against drug trafficking in Mexico, he shared his experiences with agents of his force, the Spanish and Colombian National Police, the DEA or the FBI. It was in 2013. “You can’t imagine how scary it was to go to the academy with the convoy that had been set up. “I haven’t seen that even in the Basque Country.”compare.
Tired and eager for a change of scenery, he preferred not to ask for favors and his promotion in the brigade allowed him to return as a civil servant to Carboneras, in Almería, where his father was stationed. With family in Toledo, because “It is not advisable to move a teenager from one place to another”Manuel confirmed the increase in arrivals of illegal immigrants in Spain: “The first time I was posted, twelve boats entered in three years. Three years later, we intervened 75 times in 16 months.
He also worked at the Toledo command, where he moved to a staff office, where his activity became bureaucratic from Monday to Friday. “I have gained in quality of life”recognizes the one who, with his reports, has witnessed the increase in crime and danger in the La Sagra area. “It’s been brutal the last few years,” he says flatly.
Always supported by his wife, María del Pilar, His professional life ended in Alsasua (Navarra)where he had lived and worked during the bloody “years of lead”. “I left with resentment towards Basque society and when I returned I felt like I had made peace with myself. It seems like a cheesy expression, but it’s true. I have a feeling of liberation…”, admits the one who, in May, six months ago, went to the reserve after having completed the loop.
