One day, Bego, I called you to ask your sister’s date of birth. In a voice message, you told me you didn’t remember the exact date, that you’d have to check the family record book.
Bego: Hi Isabel. Hey, I know it’s October, around the 20-something, I don’t know the exact day. Look, I always remember it was either one day before or one day after ETA announced they were stopping the armed struggle. And I always thought “look, they ended the armed struggle when my sister was born, I mean, on her birthday”. I’ll keep looking at home. You know how some things are so well kept you can’t find them… well, that’s the case here.
It didn’t take long: very soon you sent me a text. “My sister was born on October 21, 1958,” you said. And also: “ETA’s end was on October 20, 2011, that’s why I remembered it was a day before or after.”
So when she died, your sister was 20 months and a week old.
In that message, you also said that in your house you never celebrated that day, because your parents never talked about it.
And I’ve thought of them. And I’ve imagined them at home, knowing again, year after year, that it was October 21. One more year keeping the birthday of their first daughter to themselves. One more year not telling you, their other kids. One more year in silence.
Welcome, Bego, and welcome everyone, to She Had My Name, a documentary series about the memory of Begoña Urroz: about five decades of a family’s silence and the noise that broke it.
A series by De eso no se habla, co-produced with EITB Media and supported by the Ministry of Culture.
And this is episode 2: The Silence.
At first, you and I met alone. Juan Luis, your husband, was traveling when we did the first interviews and I thought I was lucky to have contacted you while he was away: I thought you’d feel freer to talk. But it was quite the opposite: after our first chats, he came back from his trip and started being around during our conversations.
(Isabel: Do you want him to stay? You can stay. I mean…
Juan Luis: No, no…)
Sometimes, I invited him to stay: you wanted him to, he wanted to, and I liked having him there. He always stayed in the background, behind you, silently supporting you, knowing this is your story.
Bego: You see, he’s very calm.
Juan Luis: If you tell me not to make noise…
Isabel: No, really…
And so, little by little, Juan Luis became Juanlu to me, and part of this podcast.
Isabel: How long have you been married to Begoña?
Juanlu: Oof, you’ve asked something I might not know… but well, 37 years? I think. I was 30, now I’m 66, so 36 years…
When I hear you two talk, I think I would have liked to see you back then, as boyfriend and girlfriend.
Juanlu: Well, had to marry someday…
Bego: I always say that when I got married…
I imagine you like you are now: both sociable, each with your own group of friends, and talking non-stop to each other.
I imagine you in those moments when you want to know everything about the other person and everything is a surprise and a discovery… although sometimes, one doesn’t get to know every part of someone else’s life.
Juanlu: I think we took a long time to talk politics. Really long. In fact, not until we were married. It didn’t come up unless there was an ETA attack or something. On a normal day, politics wasn’t mentioned.
This might sound strange to some, but for us, who grew up in Euskadi, it makes sense. Even in my generation, 20 years younger than you, it’s sometimes hard to talk politics. Naming things was one of the hardest parts of making this series.
Isabel: Bego, and with your story… weren’t you afraid he… I don’t know how to say it. We clearly haven’t solved the Basque issue because we don’t even know how to talk about it. But weren’t you afraid he might…
Bego: That he was pro-ETA? No, because… you could sense it. You felt it in town, with the people you were with, who leaned in what direction. I was anti… I don’t know how to say it. Maybe from my parents’ education, who never wanted to talk politics. They taught me: zero politics.
But not talking about politics meant not talking about a big part of your life.
Juanlu: When did I find out about what happened with Begoña Urroz? I think… right before we got married or after four or five years together. It was probably at one of those lunches at her parents’ house. I was shocked. I didn’t even know. I just didn’t know.
And Juanlu wasn’t the only one.
Juanlu: I think three-quarters of the town didn’t know either. Maybe 80%. Even her own friends…
So hidden on the outside; so present inside.
Because, even if your parents didn’t speak of it, honoring the dead comes out in other ways: objects we keep, gestures that remind us of the ones who aren’t there. Or dates that repeat each year, forcing us to face grief.
Juanlu: I remember during the anniversaries, which were during town festivities, your mother never wanted to go out.
Bego: The 28th.
Juanlu: Never. And one time we did, there were fireworks, and one landed under her skirt and exploded. She got sick, started remembering everything again. “You killed my daughter and now you’ll kill me.” After that, she never went out again.
Not remembering a birthday, but having the death date etched forever. As if sorrow were the only way to fix memory when a family faces the unexplainable.
Bego: I just wanted to show you something…
Since we met, we’ve walked a lot through Lasarte.
Bego: Let’s cross…
You and Juanlu got married in the 80s: the time of industrial reconversion, and the years with the most killings by ETA.
Bego: Back then, they used to bomb the banks around here.
Your parents had a shoe store.
Bego: We’re heading now to where my parents’ shop used to be.
There are no shoes in the window now. The store is empty. Right across the street, there’s a bank branch.
Bego: See the bank? This used to be a road for cars, a parking area. This small store was the shoe shop… So every time they bombed the bank, the shop would get blown up too. I remember it happening two or three times. They’d call us and say, “Come quickly, there’s been a bomb, the shop is destroyed.” Imagine the four of us waking up in the middle of the night.
Bego: Whenever they bombed the bank, we had to shut up, not say anything. It was a “collateral damage”. The bomb wasn’t aimed at us, but the shop was across the street. The whole storefront exploded. Shoes everywhere, broken glass, destruction. Once, my father broke down and shouted, “You killed my little girl, and now you want to kill me!” And we’d tell him, “Dad, be quiet, please, don’t say anything, shhh.” After losing his little girl in one bombing, then getting hit by another and another, and still asking him to stay quiet. So no one would hear. “Shhh, Dad. Shhh.”
Since I met you, we’ve talked about many difficult things. The little girl’s death, the weight of her name, the silence, your mother’s pain. But I’ve never seen you get so emotional as when you talk about your father.
Bego: Do you know what my father went through? After the bombing that killed the little girl, and the others… without being able to speak. My father… Every time there was a killing by ETA and a demonstration, he always went. But nobody knew. He went just like I would, like you would. But no one knew. He didn’t want to say anything. “Don’t tell, don’t talk, silence.” “Ixo, ixo, ixo.”
And so, between “ixo, ixo”—shhh, in Basque—and a society that never recognized you as victims, your family lived like that for years. For decades.
Until in 2000, someone took an interest in your story.
Bego: The handwriting’s hard to read…
Someone who sent a letter to your mother.
Bego: It’s a letter from the University of Barcelona. It says “Legal Assistance Office”—well, it’s in Catalan…
Someone completely unexpected.
Bego: “Dear Madam, thank you for your help in better understanding something that must not be forgotten. The tenderness for Begoña has overwhelmed me as I’ve gone through newspapers, magazines, and books, as well as over the phone. Receive my warmest regards. I spend time in San Sebastián and would like to give a hug to someone who suffered so much. Sincerely, Ernest Lluch.”
Ernest Lluch. Politician, professor, public figure. He had been Minister of Health and in the 1980s, during the first Socialist government. By the year 2000, when he sent this letter, he held no official political position, but he was still tied to the university as a professor—that’s why the letterhead—and remained a prominent figure.
It was very surprising to me to find Lluch in this story. He was one of the most respected and beloved politicians across much of the political spectrum in Spain. Also in Euskadi. Lluch was Catalan but had a strong connection to the Basque Country. He had a house in Donosti, very close to Lasarte. He was a member of the Donosti Orfeón, a supporter of Real Sociedad, and part of organizations like Elkarri, a social movement advocating for peaceful, negotiated solutions to the “Basque issue”.
Txema Urquijo, one of the founders of the peace movement Gesto por la Paz is someone I spoke to often for this story. He remembers Lluch as a “bridge-builder”:
Txema: Those diverse voices who are so essential to any movement: the heterodox. In every movement, in every process, heterodoxy is key. And Ernest Lluch was heterodox. He wasn’t someone who followed “what the party says.” He was someone who’d say, “No, in this matter we need to stir things up, we need to shake this, because otherwise nothing changes.”
One of his most remembered moments is this one:
[Ambient: video clip]
A stage in a square in San Sebastián. It’s 1999, and i’ts a Socialist-Party rally. In front of him, hundreds of people holding signs in support of bringing ETA prisoners closer to the Basque Country.
[Video continues]
Ernest Lluch, wearing a cream-colored blazer and a burgundy tie, steps onto the stage. He looks euphoric.
Ernest Lluch: What joy! What joy to come to this square and see that those used to kill now shout. And now, they don’t kill. What joy!
“What joy to see that those who now shout used to kill,” he says. That year, 1999, ETA was observing a ceasefire.
Ernest: Freedom and democracy have arrived in this country! And they don’t even realize!
Some people applaud. But most—most boo, louder and louder.
Ernest: Shout more! You’re not shouting enough! Shout…
And then he said it.
Ernest: …because while you shout, you won’t kill!
“Shout, because while you shout, you won’t kill.” That line went down in history.
Ernest: …a joy for this country that we’ve won…
A year after that rally, in the summer of 2000, Ernest Lluch called your neighbor to ask about your sister’s death. That neighbor was Isabel, the one with the kitchen where I opened this series—the kitchen where the Bizikidetza group of Lasarte used to meet. The kitchen through which I met you.
We don’t know how Lluch got her phone number. Isabel was known around town for being active in many associations and groups. Maybe that’s why it was easier to find her number than your family’s. After all, her kitchen was wall-to-wall with yours—the kitchen where your family lived when your sister died.
So when the phone rang, Isabel stepped into the hallway and knocked on your mother’s door. “It’s Ernest Lluch,” she said. He was calling to ask about the story of the little girl. The two women listened together, holding the same receiver to their ears. That’s how they told it to you. That’s how you told it to me. And that’s how I picture it—every time.
We don’t know what Lluch asked them, if it was a long call or a short one. What we do know is that he said he wanted to meet them. And that, a few weeks later, your mother received the letter you read to me.
Four days after that letter, Lluch published an article in several newspapers: from La Vanguardia, the most widely read paper in Catalonia, to El Correo and El Diario Vasco, the two biggest in Euskadi. The article was titled “The First Victim of ETA.”
Lluch wrote that, although most people believed the first victim of ETA was José Antonio Pardines, a Civil Guard killed in 1968, the first victim was actually a little girl. Your sister. Lluch wrote: “The family confirms the baby’s name was Urroz and that she was 22 months old”—as if confirming that phone call he had made to the neighbor’s house, to ISabel.
Bego: It was the first time the story came out. So for my mother, it was like the whole world finally knew what had happened. And since Ernest said in the article that it was ETA, well for my mother, that was gospel.
And it wasn’t just gospel for your mother. For many people, that article was the one that launched and solidified the idea that your sister was ETA’s first victim. And because of that, in a way, we always end up coming back to it in this series.
Lluch’s article ends like this: “To Begoña’s mother, who is still alive, I want to extend all my tenderness from June 28, 1960, until the end. To her murderers, may remorse devastate you. A shameful beginning in the original sin of ETA.”
It was the first time your mother felt recognized as a victim in a public way. She and Ixabel were counting down the days to finally embrace that man. But that day never came.
News anchor: Good evening. Former Socialist minister Ernest Lluch has been assassinated tonight in the parking garage of his home with two shots to the head. The attack occurred shortly before 10 PM…
ETA killed him on November 21, 2000, in Barcelona. Two months after writing that article. Four months after promising your mother he would come to meet her.
[Ambient: demonstration]
Reporter (Samanta): One million people have gathered here. One million people…
His murder was a shock for so many. I remember watching the Barcelona march on TV—one million people marching in silence, all the political leaders at the front: Aznar, Zapatero, Ibarretxe… It was incredibly rare to see them together. It was a time of deep political turmoil; the peace talks between the Aznar government and ETA had just broken down, and both sides were accusing each other of not being tough enough on terrorism, of fueling political tension.
And that’s why it was so striking. That’s why I remember so clearly what journalist Gemma Nierga said from the stage, at the end of the demonstration.
Gemma: And now I want to end this speech with a plea. And I’ll say it in Spanish so everyone can understand. I am convinced that Ernest, even with the person who killed him, would have tried to talk. Those of you who still can—please, talk.
In your mother’s home, Lluch’s death was also a shock. On the day of the murder, Isabel knocked on her door.
Bego: “Jesusa, they’ve killed Ernest Lluch!” They hugged each other and cried. I remember being frozen.
As you remembered that hug, there in your own kitchen, you told me something that really surprised me:
Bego: I think it was about a month later he wrote the article. And I think my mother thought, “They’ve killed him because he said it was ETA.”
Your mother, thinking Lluch was killed because of the article about your sister. Your mother, adding more weight to her silence: being the mother of one victim, and suddenly carrying the guilt of another one.
That article was not only gospel for your mother—it became the foundation for many others that followed. It solidified the idea that your sister was ETA’s first victim.
It was the first time your mother felt publicly recognized as a victim.
She and Ixabel counted the days to meet him in person. But that day never came.
News presenter: Good evening. Former socialist minister Ernest Lluch was shot dead tonight in the parking garage of his home…
ETA murdered him on November 21, 2000, two months after writing that article and four months after promising your mother he would come to meet her.
[Ambient audio: protest, demonstration]
I’ll never be able to ask Ernest Lluch how he came across your sister’s story, or why he became so interested in her, or how long he spent researching—but I can tell you that it’s one of the questions I’ve asked myself most while making this series.
[Ambient sound – outside]
And since I couldn’t ask Lluch directly, I thought that to try to find the answer, I’d have to go to an oracle. Or the closest to an oracle: his personal archive.
Isabel: Hi, Esther.
Esther: Hi, how are you?
Ernest Lluch’s archive is in Vilassar de Mar, a beautiful town on the coast near Barcelona, just half an hour by train. It’s housed within his foundation.
Esther: Welcome.
Isabel: Thank you.
I went there one day in December, just before Christmas, and the archive was empty—only Esther, the librarian, was there.
Esther: I’ve brought you everything that has any reference or that I’ve seen might relate to the Basque Country.
Isabel: Okay.
And that was exactly what I was hoping for: to search through Lluch’s papers about Euskadi for something that could’ve led him to your sister.
Esther: But I don’t know if you’ll find anything useful…
Because the article Ernest Lluch wrote in 2000 has become a key piece in this story: most of the people I spoke to know it, cite it, refer to it as the starting point of everything.
Esther: …I don’t think there’s anything on that topic…
“Lluch said so” people say, “Lluch wrote it in 2000.”
Esther: It’s something he wrote… I’ll get it for you. It was a piece published in La Vanguardia.
[Ambient]
But in reality, that wasn’t the first time Lluch had taken an interest in your sister. Before that article, he had already published others saying that your sister was ETA’s first victim.
Isabel: He wrote three—two before that one.
Esther: Earlier than the one in La Vanguardia?
Isabel: Yes.
The first one I found is from 1993, titled ETA Wasn’t Born to Fight Franco. But Lluch went on to write more, always describing your sister as ETA’s first victim.
Esther: Well, take a look around. Let me know if you need anything.
I really love archives. I love the shared silence, the feeling that we’re all there, immersed in pages, searching for treasures. You know I’m a philologist, so maybe that’s why—I’ve spent so many hours in archives. I especially love tracing the paths from one place to another: seeing how someone reads something, how someone else quotes it, and how others read and re-quote it… and how often, those quotes start to shift. Like a game of telephone, where the original message gets passed from person to person until what reaches the end is so different from the start.
Isabel: What beautiful handwriting!
Esther: Yes, it’s also beautiful when you’re not the one trying to read it.
Isabel: Yeah, that’s true.
And that’s something that’s always struck me about your sister’s story: that the theory of her being an ETA victim was built on very few sources. And those sources kept getting repeated, from one publication to another, shifting slightly, sometimes without verification. The more I think about your sister’s story, the more I believe it’s really a story about sources. Who quotes whom, how, and why.
So, taking advantage of the archive’s silence, I’m going to get a bit nerdy and tell you about the sources that built the story of your sister—because many of them come from Lluch’s earliest articles. I’ll try to keep it as simple as possible, but it’s actually a crucial part of the story.
Esther: This is also something Ernest read somewhere…
Isabel: Yes, he read it…
In every article Lluch wrote, he starts from the same information, the same source: a footnote.
Sometimes people say history is written in footnotes—and in this case, that’s literally true. This particular footnote is very important to this story. It was, as far as I know, the first time someone put into writing the theory that your sister was a victim of ETA.
The author of the book—the author of that footnote—was José Antonio Pagola, a priest who was then the vicar of San Sebastián. In his book, he wrote about the Basque Church’s stance on “the Basque issue.” And in one of the opening pages, he wrote this footnote. I’ll read it to you: “In reality, it seems the first victim of an ETA terrorist act was the 22-month-old girl Begoña Urroz Ibarrola, who died on June 27, 1960, from an explosive device placed at the Amara station in San Sebastián.”
And there it is—first mention: Begoña Urroz, 22 months old, June 27, victim of ETA.
That note—something seemingly minor—became the source for all—and I mean all—of Lluch’s articles. And also for every article and book that came after. And trust me, a lot has been written about your sister since.
[Ambient: archive]
But for now, let’s go with Lluch’s articles.
In the first one, from 1993, he relies solely on Pagola’s footnote. But in the next, in 1995, he adds more sources: he cites a timeline he found in the newspaper Egin. It was titled Chronology of ETA, but really it was more a timeline of key events in Basque history. It covered a bit of everything: it mentions arrests, attacks—but also things like a fine given to the Osasuna football players in 1959 for visiting the Basque Center in Caracas (a 250,000 peseta fine! ). Or that the parish radio station in Tolosa had three broadcasts in Basque. Stuff like that.
Among those events, the bomb that killed your sister is mentioned—but with two big mistakes: the date is wrong (it says December 1959), and ETA is not named as responsible.
Still, in his article, Lluch wonders: could it be the same little girl? Referring to your sister.
Even though Lluch phrases it as a question, soon after, other articles and books start citing that timeline to say your sister was ETA’s first victim. The first to do so after Lluch were two journalists in the newspaper ABC. And in 1998, a book comes out saying it outright—not in a footnote, but in the main text.
Isabel: They highlight the key elements of ETA as the practice of activism through action…
And, little by little, those sources pass from publication to publication, year after year, in a slow but steady trickle.
Isabel: The dead by year were, in order: 1980, 79, 78—with 100, 85, and 69 killings respectively…
And then, in 2000, Lluch publishes his final article—the most famous one. The one your mother read. But this time, he doesn’t cite any timelines. Still, he had done his homework: he read the news articles from when your sister died, he reviewed bulletins from the Basque government in exile, and he even looked at the claim of responsibility issued by the DRIL—the one I read to you in the first episode. But he says he doesn’t trust it.
Lluch even visited Lazkao, the most comprehensive archive on ETA. But he says he didn’t find a single document linking ETA to the Amara bombing.
And so, what Lluch bases his final article on—that article from the year 2000, the one your mother read, the one that made her feel recognized for the first time, the one that so many others cited later—was, above all, that footnote by Pagola.
He also says that your family received an official version attributing the attack to ETA, and that in the neighborhood—in your neighborhood—there was no doubt. I think that refers to the call he made to your neighbor Isabel’s house. That call from the year 2000, four months before he was killed. With the two women holding the same phone.
Isabel: The full list of people killed by ETA per year reads like this. And here it already says: 1960—one.
In Lluch’s archive, I found lots of material about his interest in Euskadi.
Isabel: A little pamphlet from the Donosti town hall to learn Basque—and there are his notes. Blanca, zuri; negra, beltza; blue, urdin; green…
And I saw how deeply he had studied ETA.
Isabel: …the importance of Marxism as ETA’s ideological foundation…
But no matter how many hours I spent trying to decipher his handwriting, I never found anything directly mentioning your sister. Or whether he had spoken with Vicar Pagola. Or even—my dream—notes about that call he made to Isabel and your mother.
Esther: Are you done?
Isabel: I wish there were more, but…
Esther: But no, that’s all there is.
Isabel: There’s nothing more.
Still, Lluch is a key figure in this story. Much of what would come later is built on that article from 2000. And I needed more answers.
Isabel: Thank you so much. Deu.
[Ambient: outside]
Since I couldn’t find answers in that oracle—that personal archive—I decided to visit another kind of oracle: the family one.
Isabel: OK, we’re good. So, I’m going to ask you to introduce yourself. Tell me who you are and where we are.
Rosa: I’m Rosa Lluch Bramón. I’m a professor of Medieval History. We’re in my office at the Faculty of Geography and History at the University of Barcelona, where I teach.
Rosa Lluch, Ernest’s daughter, welcomed me one winter evening in her office. It was already Christmas break and it felt like we were the only two people in the building. And maybe we were. Rosa is 55, has dark hair, and wears striking blue-rimmed glasses. She looks a lot like her father. And she talks about him often.
Rosa: When you’re Ernest Lluch’s daughter, you know you’re going to get interviewed, asked, requested… because of my father’s name.
For her, your sister’s story wasn’t new.
Rosa: For him, really, Begoña Urroz was an obsession—like a symbol, something he believed needed to be reclaimed.
Rosa is a historian, and in our conversation she brought up two key ideas that made it clear what she considers most important in doing history.
Rosa: We all depend on what’s been written down—on what someone acknowledges. And he read it in writing. And all of us who do research know that sometimes, you start pulling on a thread that leads you down a path—a path that might not be the right one, but it’s the one that’s pulling you along.
One of those essential elements of history is just that: the path. History as a process built over time. The roads we take, the ones we skip.
The second key idea is context:
Rosa: There’s a historian I really admire named Pierre Vilar who always said: “The historian is inside History.”
And for Rosa, her father’s articles were doing exactly that—engaging with his own History, his own context.
Rosa: I think that in the year 2000, we needed a wake-up call. At least on the surface, from the outside, it seemed like part of society was quietly accepting the terrorist attacks, or not reacting. And it was necessary to shake things up and say: “Hey, there weren’t different versions of this. Violence is always wrong.”
Throughout the interviews I’ve done for this series, many people have spoken about Lluch with deep admiration. And that admiration, I think, often led people to downplay his political intentions. Some even told me Lluch wrote that article with no political motivation at all. At first, I have to admit, Bego, I thought the same. As if respect for Lluch led us all to deny he had any political purpose.
But later—especially after speaking with Rosa—I realized that saying that actually does him a disservice. Because Ernest was, above all, a political man. How could he not have political intent in writing those articles?
Rosa: I really do think my father wanted to make the point that ETA’s very first victim didn’t deserve to die—and that even suggesting that early victims somehow “had it coming” is a terrible mistake.
Rosa sometimes uses the word “provocation,” other times “intervention.” Because writing about this meant stepping right into a decades-long debate: whether or not there was ever a “good ETA.” That may sound strange to someone unfamiliar with the topic, but that’s what it’s called. A 2010 issue of Gesto por la Paz’s magazine was titled exactly that: “The good ETA, the bad ETA.”
At its core, the debate asks: did ETA have any legitimacy in its early days? Was there ever an anti-Francoist ETA that fought for freedom? Or was it always a nationalist movement that foreshadowed what was to come?
That’s why the question of who the first victim was is so important: ETA could be remembered either as a group that first killed a Civil Guard and then a Francoist torturer—or as a group that, from the beginning, committed the worst possible crime: killing a little girl. A kind of original sin.
In fact, Lluch’s final article—the one from 2000—was published in La Vanguardia with that exact title.
Rosa: The title ETA’s Original Sin seems to me like a provocation. A provocation meant to stir consciences. And it’s true—looking back now, he took a strong stance on a subject that maybe didn’t need it. Especially something that should have been very well verified.
Rosa: So, why did Ernest Lluch wade into this? I don’t have the answer.
Rosa didn’t have the answer—and I wasn’t expecting her to. But I did want to ask what she thought about what happened after those articles—how they sparked a whole narrative placing your sister as ETA’s first victim.
Rosa: Honestly, I specialize in the 14th and 15th centuries. This whole topic feels distant to me. But I do sometimes wonder—why so much focus on one case that was, in reality, just one more? We’re talking about a kind of violence that never should’ve happened. And yet, in the end, some circles have seized on Begoña Urroz’s case to argue whether or not she was ETA’s first victim. Especially when it’s something that doesn’t affect our daily lives now, but it does affect our past. It affects the origin story. It raises the question of whether ETA’s early actions ever had meaning or legitimacy. So to me, it’s a clear example of using a terrorism victim—or victims—for political ends.
And Rosa believes that in the midst of all that, the people who lose out are always the same: the victims.
Rosa: I mean, she was a victim. So, who caused the pain? In the end, we’re seeing that the feeling of emptiness, of loneliness, of not being understood—it’s very similar for all victims.
[Music]
Maybe that’s why your mother was so affected by the murder of Ernest Lluch. I told Rosa about it. I told her how your mother reacted to his death. And the guilt she carried, as you told me.
Isabel: Actually, Begoña’s mother died believing that Ernest was killed because of his article about Begoña. I don’t know if you’d ever heard that before.
Rosa: I’ve heard everything—that he was killed because of the article, because he was looking for ways to dialogue… But I think Begoña’s mother deserved to die in peace. The people who killed him did it because they wanted to. Not because of anyone else. And no one should ever feel responsible for someone else’s actions. That just adds another layer of injustice. She was already a victim—she didn’t need to carry the burden of another.
And since history isn’t linear—and since we were jumping between past and present—I asked Rosa what she thought her father would’ve done if he’d realized he was wrong.
Rosa: I don’t think he would’ve taken it well at first. Because admitting you were wrong is never easy. But he would’ve admitted it eventually. There’s one article—I can’t remember which—where he says something like, “I wish we had a red pencil to go back and correct what we wrote at the start.” And I think that’s it. He would’ve corrected himself. Maybe not happily at first, but he would’ve done it.
And I also asked her the one question I secretly wished I could’ve asked her father from the beginning of this story.
Isabel: Do you think he would’ve liked me doing this?
Rosa: Deep down, yes. We all have a bit of vanity. And there’s that feeling of: “Well, they’re talking about me—even if it’s to say I was wrong.”
Isabel: I’m going to tell him: “Ernest, look at the stir you caused.”
Rosa: Yeah—“Ernest, look at the stir you caused.” But think about it: if he hadn’t stirred things up, would we even be talking about Begoña Urroz? If he hadn’t amplified a footnote, would we be having this conversation? There are so many cases where we need the truth. And yes, it’s uncomfortable. It’s uncomfortable for me, too. And I’m sure I’m not the only one. Because people want to put you in a box—if you support one thing, then you must be against the other. No. We believe the truth should be known. And if we need to do some self-criticism, then let’s do it.
And at the end of our conversation, I asked if she had a message for you.
Isabel: Do you want to say something to Begoña?
Rosa: Yes—our deepest recognition. We are all victims. And I understand that the suffering they went through is nothing like ours. From the very first moment, all of Catalonia stood behind Ernest Lluch’s family. But no one ever recognized Begoña Urroz.
[Ambient: kitchen]
Back in your kitchen, I had you listen to my conversation with Rosa.
Bego: I liked hearing her, I really liked it.
Juanlu: Her ideas were so clear. She spoke about her father, about themselves… and she’s absolutely right.
Bego: What she said, yes, yes.
Juanlu: “Look at the stir he caused,” but she’s right—if he hadn’t caused it, would this even be a topic?
Bego: That stuck with me too.
Juanlu: Would this have come up?
Bego: If he hadn’t written those articles, would anyone have talked about it?
You told me that the murder of Ernest Lluch sent your family back into silence.
Bego: When he died… It was a deep sorrow. We talked about it privately at home, but never in public. Never. Not a word.
Juanlu: Not a word. Nothing. Nothing.
And your family kept living like that—watching, listening, staying silent. As you often say. Just like they’d learned to do long before that article.
That’s how Juan, your father, died in 2008.
Bego: My father died believing that it was ETA. That’s clear. He died without most people knowing. He died without any kind of recognition. He died in absolute silence and absolute pain, swallowed whole—for him and for the family. My father left this world… Look, the only thing I do remember is that when he died, the only thing he said was that at last, he was going to be with his daughter—with his little girl. So… you see, even now, after all these years… It’s just that, when I talk about my father, I can’t help it. Because the poor man died keeping it all in. He died without being able to express it, without saying or telling what he would’ve liked to tell. It’s sad—not being able to say, plainly and simply, what had happened. That his daughter had been killed. To tell it. To release that pain.
And it seemed like Jesusa, your mother, would die like that too—holding in that pain, as you say. Watching, listening, and staying silent.
Until, at the end of 2009—almost ten years after Lluch’s murder—someone made you a proposal.
That’s coming up, in the next episode.
[Music]
Thanks for getting here, and thank you for listening to the first two episodes of She Had My Name. The story continues, with new episodes, next Sunday, June 8.
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Thank you so, so much for listening. Until next week.
