This Friday, the Pamplona City Hall placed a commemorative plaque in memory of Ángel Berrueta, the merchant murdered on March 13, 2004, two days after the 11M jihadist attacks, by a national police officer for refusing to place in the window of his bakery a poster on which the authorship of the attacks was attributed to ETA, as affirmed by José María Aznar and the PP government.
The mayor of Pamplona, Joseba Asiron, accompanied by relatives of Berrueta and the Minister of Memory and Coexistence, Foreign Action and Euskera of the Government of Navarra, Ana Ollo, placed the plaque in front of the establishment where the bakery was located. Berrueta fled and where he was murdered, on Martín Azpilcueta Street, next to gate 18, in the San Juan/Donibane neighborhood of Pamplona.
Berrueta’s relatives were also present at the event: his widow, Mari Carmen Mañas, and three of his four children, Imanol, Aitor and Aitziber. His son Enekoitz works outside Pamplona and was unable to attend the event. They are also considered victims of political motivations. “We want to remember not only for ourselves, but also for those, like Ángel, who can no longer speak or tell their story. We remember for all the victims and for those who in the future will also remember. So that history does not repeat itself. Thank you for your strength, for your fight and for keeping the memory of Ángel alive all this time,” said Mayor Joseba Asiron.
On the plaque, whose text was supervised by the Department of Memory and Coexistence of the Government of Navarra, we can read, in Basque and Spanish: “Here he was murdered by the police officer Ángel Berrueta Legaz, in a politically motivated context. motivated. March 13, 2004. Truth, memory, dignity and justice.
Berrueta was 60 years old when he was murdered. On March 12, 2004, he did not open his bakery, adding to the mourning that many traders in Spain showed that day. He also placed a black crepe in his window as a sign of mourning after the jihadist massacre of March 11 in which 192 people died and more than 2,000 were injured. However, this was not enough for María del Pilar Rubio, who, on March 13 at noon, went to the Berrueta bakery, next to the entrance to her house, to demand that he put up a sign with the legend “ETA ez” (ETA not in Basque). After the merchant’s refusal, Rubio told Berrueta, whom he considered a member of ETA for having founded the Gurasoak association, to the relatives involved in the ‘kale borroka’ actions (two of his sons were arrested then declared innocent for actions of this type): “You are a murderer, you are an ETA.
She later returned home and told what had happened to her husband, Valeriano de la Peña, and her son Miguel. They both went down to the Berrueta bakery, where they stabbed him. The baker tried to take refuge in the back room of the store, but that’s when the national police, with their service pistol, fired four shots at him. The two murderers left the scene without going to Berrueta.
In a trial held in 2005, national police officer Valeriano de la Peña and his son Ángel de la Peña were sentenced to 20 and 15 years in prison, respectively, for aggravated murder for “ideological motivation.” María del Pilar Rubio was found guilty of incitement to crime, but a few months later she was acquitted by the Superior Court of Justice of Navarra. According to the judgment, the attackers acted “out of ideological feeling”, because the victim was “a partner and founding member of the ‘Gurasoak Lanean’ association”, considering him to be an “ETA”.
A few months ago, the Navarra government declared Ángel Berrueta and his family, who for years continued to receive anonymous death threats, victims of police violence.
