Previously on…
Xuban: There’s a girl who gets murdered…
Bego: On June 27, 1960, a bomb exploded at the Amara station in San Sebastián. Begoña Urroz Ibarrola died in the fire.
Xuban: The story twists and it’s investigated whether the killing wasn’t committed by ETA, but rather…
Montanyá: The DRIL claimed responsibility for the bombs going off in Spain.
Bego: What was happening at the time was ETA. What else were you going to think?
Juanlu: I think three quarters of the town didn’t know what had happened.
Bego: “Don’t tell, don’t speak, just be quiet.” “You’ve killed my daughter — what do you want now, to kill me too?”
Rosa: No one acknowledged Begoña Urroz.
Host: Former socialist minister Ernest Lluch was murdered tonight…
Bego: “Jesusa, they killed Ernest Lluch!”
Rosa: If he hadn’t amplified what was just a footnote, would we even be talking about Begoña Urroz?
[Ambience from Lasarte]
Begoña: And now we’re going to head to the town hall entrance, because that’s where, when the 50th anniversary was held…
During one of our walks around Lasarte, you took me to the old town hall.
Begoña: Well, this used to be, originally, even a jail. This was the town hall.
You showed it to me like it was your own home — because in a way, it is.
Bego: Kaixo! Aizu. Me…
You’ve worked as an administrative assistant in that town hall for 40 years.
Bego: We’re doing kind of a…
Man: A report…
Begoña: Well, because of the issue — you know, my sister and all that, the terrorism victims and everything.
You brought me there because something important for your family happened in that place.
Bego: We’ll be right back.
[Music]
At the end of 2009, that town hall began to consider organizing a tribute to the local victims of ETA.
Bego: The council chamber is right here…
The proposal came from the PSOE, the ruling party at the time, and it sparked debate: some council members argued that the event should include other victims — from the Civil War, from far-right violence, or from the GAL. Others, like members of the PNV or the abertzale left, didn’t even attend the council meeting, protesting how the matter was being handled.
But in the end, it was decided that yes, a tribute would be held for the ETA victims who had been killed in the town. Including your sister.
But would your family want to take part in a public event after so many years of silence, after so long without speaking?
Jesús: So I called Begoña and…
Jesús Zaballos, the councilman in charge of organizing the event, had an easy way to find out: he just had to call you to his office, in the same building.
Jesús: And I proposed that we were going to hold this tribute, and asked if she would be willing to participate.
Begoña: I remember how he came and told me they wanted to hold that tribute and asked what my mother would think.
Jesús: What she told me was that she’d speak with her mother, with Jesusa.
Bego: I remember saying, “No, no, my mother has never wanted to speak out, she’s not going to say anything.”
Jesús: But she was deeply saddened that her father had died and couldn’t witness it…
Bego: And we were surprised when she said yes — that for once, she was going to speak, why not, that she’d been silent for 50 years and now she wanted to go.
Welcome, Bego — welcome everyone — to She Had My Name, a documentary series about a family’s silence, your family’s silence, and the noise that broke it.
[Theme]
A series by (De eso no se habla) co-produced with EITB Media and with the support of the Ministry of Culture.
This is episode 3: Lasarte.
Isabel: Why do you think your mother agreed?
Begoña: I think… well, she reached a point where she said, “Well, my husband is gone, this is as far as we go.” And she said, “Why not, right? I have nothing to be ashamed of. I’ve been silent for so many years, haven’t I? Well, now let people know and acknowledge what happened.” And she got brave and said, “Here I am.”
[Music ends]
Your mother surprised everyone. Because it wasn’t just that she had kept silent about her daughter’s death. It was also that, in some way, that silence was shared by the rest of the town. Something the older generation knew about, but that was never spoken of beyond the walls of their homes. Not even in the town hall.
Isabel: You knew, and you never spoke to Begoña about it?
Ana: No.
Isabel: Why not?
Ana: Because I think they kept the secret. I think they…
This is someone you know well — Ana Urchueguía, the mayor of Lasarte when the tribute was organized.
Ana: Um… Well, it was that kind of thing that happened back then, right? I think people… I had the feeling they felt guilty, even — guilty that it had happened.
And she also knows you well. The day you started working at the town hall, someone told her your story.
Ana: And a resident told me, “You’ve got a girl there named Begoña Urroz, but ETA murdered her 22-month-old sister.”
But she never said anything to you. Even though for years she saw your father attend the silent vigils organized by Gesto por la Paz whenever someone was killed.
Ana: There were about 30 of us at those protests. And the father always came, he sat on the little bench and cried. He cried deeply. I remember his hands, how they trembled. Never standing. Always sitting on that bench. And I thought, “My God, what this man must be going through.”
And she told me she didn’t even speak to you about your sister’s death when, in the year 2000, she received a letter.
[Music]
Ana: A few years later Ernest wrote to me…
You can hear me in the background saying, “Ernest Lluch?” because this surprised me so much: another letter from Lluch from that time about your sister, one I didn’t know about. And the former mayor had brought it to the interview.
Isabel: Will you read it to me?
Ana: I won’t be able to, I didn’t bring my glasses.
Isabel: Let me see. Shall I read it?
Ana: Yes.
Isabel: “Barcelona, September 21, 2000. Dear Mayor and friend, I worked over the past summer — which I spent semi-clandestinely — on this article in various libraries. The girl’s parents still live in the same place. They are modest people economically and, I think, have received little attention. I called you before publishing it… Warm regards, Ernest Lluch.” And then down here it says…
Ana: “Received.”
Isabel: It’s signed…
Ana: It’s signed by Froilán.
Urchueguía was on vacation when that letter arrived. Instead, it was received by the deputy mayor, Froilán Elespe. ETA would murder him just a few months later, in March 2001. That’s why she treasures the letter so much.
Ana: Yes, because look at the coincidence, right? He received this and shortly after he was murdered.
But despite how deeply Urchueguía was moved seeing your father at those vigils, despite that letter from Lluch, no one from the town hall ever spoke to you about your sister’s death until 2009, when plans for the tribute began.
The one in charge was Jesús Zaballos, who at the time was deputy mayor. The first thing he did was define which victims would be included in the tribute.
Jesús: And I started working based on the data I had from the Basque Government.
Zaballos worked with two victim lists. One came from the Basque Government.
[Music]
Jesús: Not only the victims who had been murdered, but also those who had suffered some kind of attack and injuries.
The other was the list from the Ministry of the Interior.
Jesús: They were the ones who gave us all the contact information, for all the victims.
But something didn’t add up in those lists.
Jesús: In neither list did Begoña Urroz appear.
And if your sister wasn’t on any of those lists, did that mean that, at the time, neither the Basque Government nor the Spanish Government considered her a victim of ETA?
Ana: She wasn’t on the list. She wasn’t. No, they didn’t have her.
Ana: She wasn’t there.
Isabel: That proves that to them, she wasn’t an ETA victim.
Ana: No, she wasn’t. That’s true.
But at the town hall, neither Urchueguía nor Zaballos had any doubt that your sister should be part of that tribute, as one more ETA victim.
Zaballos: For us there was no doubt that she was… She was the first victim of ETA terrorism, because the evidence pointed that way.
Ana: No, I never had any doubts. I always believed it had been ETA.
[Sound of keys]
In the end, the event was held on February 15, 2010. Eleven people were honored: eight murdered by ETA and three injured.
Bego: I’m leaving the keys in the door. In this council chamber. I remember that… well, my mother and we were sitting here, and the politicians — some were over there — and then some of the other victims were here.
[Tribute video]
In the video of the event — which is what you’re hearing now in the background — you can see Froilán Elespe’s relatives, and the camera often focuses on a blonde woman who, I later found out, was Miguel Ángel Blanco’s mother: although he was from Ermua, he was killed here, in Lasarte.
Begoña: My mother was sitting here, we sat here, I think we appear in the videos or photos. My mother, yes, in the front row and we were accompanying her, my mother in the front row…
In the front row, yes, you can see it in the video. Your mother was wearing a black coat with a fur collar. It was buttoned all the way up, and she didn’t take it off during the entire event. You’re always next to her, your hair is shorter than now and you’re wearing a red coat, and you didn’t take it off either.
[Flute music]
First there was music.
Then the mayor gave a speech and handed each of the victims a sculpture…
Ana (in the video): The terrorist group ETA has committed multiple attacks…
Begoña: And then the politicians came quickly to show support. And yes, since it coincided with the 50th anniversary of the girl’s death, it was kind of a tribute to her and then to the rest of the victims.
And yes, it wasn’t just the first tribute made to your mother — it also coincided with the 50th anniversary of her daughter’s murder.
[Ambient video]
In the video, your mother looks emotional, and also nervous, not quite knowing what to do, where to look.
Begoña: Yes, she got emotional. She did get emotional. I’ve rarely seen my mother cry except when something bad happened.
After the ceremony, you all went down to the front of the Town Hall, and there the mayor and your mother unveiled a plaque that read: “The town of Lasarte-Oria in memory and tribute to the victims of terrorism.”
[Applause blends into music]
Neither the PNV councilors nor those from the abertzale left attended the event. In the video, you can see their empty seats. But representatives from the Spanish and Basque governments did attend. In fact, I’ll talk with some of them later in this series.
And there was also a lot — a lot — of press. It’s striking to see the event hall, where now only you and I are, so full. But as I watched the video, as I saw your mother get emotional, I couldn’t stop thinking about those lists. Those lists from the Ministry of the Interior and the Basque Government in which, quite simply, your sister didn’t seem to exist.
Because if it was so evident that she was a victim of ETA — so evident that she was included in that tribute — why didn’t she appear on any official list?
I decided to ask the person who might know the most. So I went to Legorreta, a town of about 1,500 people, 20 minutes by car from Lasarte.
Maixabel: Well, I’m Maixabel Lasa. And well, I worked at the Directorate for Victims of Terrorism of the Basque Government when it was created in 2001, and I was there until 2012.
You know very well who Maixabel Lasa is. Besides having directed the first victims’ office of the Basque Government, she is also a victim herself: her husband, Juan Mari Jáuregui, was murdered by ETA in July 2000. He and Ernest Lluch were very close friends. In fact, Maixabel remembers that when her husband was killed, Lluch published an article about him.
Maixabel: And in the article he said that he would be next. “Because we think the same, and since we think the same…” And indeed.
Isabel: Yes. Four months.
Maixabel: Yes. Four months apart.
Years later, Maixabel agreed to meet with her husband’s killers in restorative justice sessions through the Vía Nanclares.
During the 11 years she was at the Directorate for Victims, Maixabel and her team assisted victims of all political violence: ETA’s, but also those of the GAL and victims of police abuse. And the first thing they did to recognize them was to talk to them.
Maixabel: Taking advantage of the anniversary of each attack, we would contact the family in question. So we’d call to say, “Hi, we’re calling from the… Basque Government.” Many times, on the other end of the line, there was total silence. Or they’d say, “Why now?” you know? “After all these years?”
Your family wasn’t the only one that lived in silence: for many people, decades had gone by without anyone from any institution reaching out to them.
Maixabel: I often say that the families of the victims from the ’70s and ’80s mattered to no one. And also, those victims were often somehow blamed with that idea of “they must have done something.” So imagine. It was completely awful, right? Not only did they kill your loved one, but then they threw more dirt on you, you know?
Maixabel personally called those victims one by one. But for that to happen, of course, someone had to know you existed — you had to be on a list.
Zaballos and Urchueguía, the former mayor and councilman from Lasarte, had told me your sister didn’t appear on the ETA victims list held by the Basque Government. And I asked Maixabel if she remembered — whether your sister was on that list or not.
Isabel: But you considered her a victim… But of ETA or not?
Maixabel: No, not of ETA, but we did consider her a victim. There were some attacks that were labeled “perpetrator unknown.”
Isabel: And that’s what she was? That’s what your reports said?
Maixabel: Yes.
So according to Maixabel, for the Basque Government your sister was this: a victim of unknown perpetrators.
Maixabel: For us it was clear it hadn’t been ETA. That’s absolutely certain.
But it wasn’t just that she wasn’t considered a victim of ETA. In the Office for the Care of Victims of Terrorism, alongside Maixabel, worked Txema Urkijo. You heard from Txema briefly in the previous episode. In one of our conversations, I asked him about these lists. And what he said about your sister, Bego, I’m warning you, is quite harsh.
Txema: During the time I was in the Basque Government, we had no concerns, no worries, it didn’t cause any controversy or anything like that. It was as if she didn’t exist. As if she didn’t exist. I know that… saying it is harder than what we actually did. I mean, I wasn’t aware of the harshness of it while we were there. But today, if I have to… I insist, if I have to put it into words, if I rationalize it and express it, I don’t think it would be fair to say otherwise.
Isabel: But why do you think this happened?
Txema: That I didn’t remember?
Isabel: No, that she didn’t exist as a victim.
Txema: The doubts about who was responsible or the belief that it was the DRIL… That feeling that… that it was like an anecdote… a dramatic one, but still an anecdote… It didn’t make her worthy of being part of what we call our history of political violence in Euskadi.
He says it firmly, but not without pain.
Txema: I confess it gives me a sort of retroactive discomfort—I don’t know what to call it. Yes, that feeling that we weren’t where we needed to be. I mean as an institution. It’s not just personal.
[Music]
Talking to Txema and Maixabel made it clear that yes, those lists existed—they were internal lists used to contact the victims. Txema even tried to find them, but couldn’t. And, little by little, this became a bit of an obsession for me. And something that came up often in our conversations in your kitchen.
Bego: A year ago…
Juanlu: Should we go to the living room?
Bego: No, here is fine…
Isabel: No. We’ll do the questions later…
I wanted to show them to you on paper. So you could see those lists they used to organize the tribute, and in which, according to what I was told, your sister wasn’t counted as a victim of ETA. I wanted to go to the source, you know? But not just because of my philologist obsession: seeing those lists would have allowed us to understand how your sister’s case was being treated back then—whether any institution considered her a victim of ETA before all the noise that would come later.
Bego: Of course. So where would these be? Where would my sister be? Not on the ETA victims list.
Juanlu: Not there either.
Isabel: In the one for unknown or doubtful authorship.
Bego: They must have put her there.
I made official inquiries to both the Basque Government and the Spanish government in many ways: through Transparency Law requests, through press offices… I even asked a Basque Parliament deputy to submit a formal question on our behalf. But not even then. There was no way to get those lists from 2009.
Isabel: I just asked the Ministry of the Interior today for the historical lists of terrorism victims. To see when your sister appears on them.
Honestly, I couldn’t, and still can’t, understand why it was so hard to access those lists. And above all, I found it hard to understand why the responses were always so brief, so cryptic. I even have to say that at times I felt distrusted, as if there was always suspicion hanging over me, as if I was doing something wrong just by asking for them.
I talked to a lot of people about this.
Isabel: I’m having a lot of trouble in this podcast trying to find the victim lists, to see whether Begoña Urroz was considered a victim of terrorism or not. And I’m having a lot of trouble because I have to cross-check thousands of lists—the Ministry of the Interior’s list, the Basque Government’s lists, all the associations’ lists… Why do I have to do all this work?
Consuelo: Well, we’ve always complained about that too. There’s no official database from the Ministry of the Interior, right? With the names of all the people killed by terrorism in this country. It doesn’t exist.
This, you might recognize her voice, is Consuelo Ordóñez.
Consuelo: Sister of Gregorio Ordóñez, killed by ETA on January 23, 1995. And now president of COVITE.
COVITE, the Collective of Victims of Terrorism in the Basque Country, was founded in 1998. It’s one of the most important victim associations. Or as she puts it:
Consuelo: Of all kinds of terrorism.
COVITE includes around 400 families of people killed—yes, by ETA, but also by the GAL. And throughout this investigation, I’ve talked a lot with her about these lists.
Consuelo: Well, you can only access a list of victims who have received compensation.
What she says here is extremely important, Bego: it’s important for understanding how victims are counted, and also important for this series. The Ministry of the Interior does have a public list, but it’s not exactly a list of all victims of terrorism—it’s a list of victims who have received compensation.
Consuelo: But really, I’ve always thought that was wrong, because being compensated doesn’t necessarily mean you’re a victim of terrorism.
And for the Ministry of the Interior to compensate you, someone has to request it.
Consuelo: An official file has to be opened, and you have to prove that the person is a victim of terrorism. Then there’s a ruling that says yes, you are a victim.
But not all victims have someone to request it. While making this series, I heard about victims with no family, people who were forgotten, and because no one applied on their behalf, they don’t appear in that list from the Ministry of the Interior. And there’s also the opposite case: families who request recognition as victims, but the Ministry denies it.
Consuelo: I think that’s terribly unfair. To me, victims of terrorism are all those who were killed by a terrorist group.
[Music]
So, lacking a unified and publicly accessible list, COVITE started building its own. They even created a map, where they locate all the victims: it’s called “The Map of Terror.”
Consuelo: First we investigate, we check whether the case meets the requirements to be considered a victim of terrorism, and when it does, we add them. And the opposite happens too: we’ve come to the conclusion, through various investigations, that there are victims who aren’t actually victims. And so we remove them from the map.
Back in 2004, your sister appeared on COVITE’s list as a victim of ETA. They changed the attribution in 2015 and listed the DRIL as responsible. And COVITE isn’t the only association that keeps a count. Other associations have their own lists: for example, the Fundación de Víctimas del Terrorismo didn’t include your sister as a victim in 2009—the same year the Lasarte tribute was organized. And the Asociación de Víctimas del Terrorismo (AVT), between 2003 and 2020, included and excluded your sister from its list multiple times. And so, each association makes its own list.
[Music ends]
Consuelo: I think it should be the responsibility of the institutions, of those who have all the tools at their disposal.
So this lack of clear answers—whether your sister was considered a victim of terrorism or not, and if so, of what kind of terrorism—and the fact that I have to go through associations and books and lists to see when she was officially recognized as a victim, reflects two things: one, how complex your sister’s case has always been; and two, that there really doesn’t seem to be a unified criterion for determining what counts as a victim of terrorism.
Isabel: I really keep asking myself this: what kind of country talks so much about terrorism, and yet can’t even count its own dead? I think that’s… I don’t know.
Consuelo: Well yes, I’m constantly clashing with the administration. And we keep telling them, you know? But they just don’t want to listen. They’re not interested in listening.
[Music]
In the end, since I couldn’t get any more information, you and I decided to change strategy.
Bego: Look, Isabel, I wrote it like this: “I have just called the phone number indicated in your email for my request for the file of my sister Begoña Urroz Ibarrola…”
You yourself requested your sister’s file directly from the Ministry of the Interior to see if they would give you more information.
Bego: “Regarding the sending of the copy of the file, I would appreciate it if you could send it to me in electronic format. Thank you. Best regards, Begoña.” I hope that will be enough.
And hoping it would be enough, and knowing that administrative procedures take a long time, we started waiting. Very patiently. After all, more than 60 years have passed since those bombs at Amara station killed your sister. The last thing we were in a hurry for.
[Music]
So, now let’s return to where we left off: to Lasarte, to the Town Hall, to that plenary room where the tribute to the ETA victims was held in 2010 — that public recognition that was so important for your mother.
[Music]
Bego: And yes, I think it did her good. I think it did her good that they gave her that tribute, that she could talk about it, that people stopped her and said, “Wow, Jesusa, we didn’t know this,” “Jesusa, what you suffered.” I think it was really good for my mother that people recognized her, told her, and that she could talk about it without any kind of problem.
It was then, after the event, that for the first time in the town, people started talking to her about what had happened 50 years before. And for the first time, she felt treated as a victim of terrorism.
Bego: So back in those years… Later, gradually, people talked a little more, but back then, nothing, absolutely nothing was said. So well, I’m sure if you go to the town and ask someone who she is, now many don’t know.
Isabel: I’m going to do that. What you just said, about going to the town to ask.
Bego: Really?
And that’s what I did — or rather, what we did: we asked.
Bego: Well, look, you can ask that guy, he might know.
We started right there, with the municipal worker to whom you returned the keys.
Bego: The files. I might ask you something.
Man: Me?
Isabel: Do you know her story?
Man: I know very little of her story. That your mother had a girl, Begoña, who at two years old… The first killed by ETA. Two years, something like that.
Bego: But well, it’s not ETA. Now they’ve said it’s not ETA. It’s DRIL. D, R, I, L. DRIL. But well, yes, he does know.
Man: That’s the story… And her parents then decided to have another girl, right? I imagine,
Bego: Yes.
Man: She was born and they gave her the same name, Begoña, and we have her here. Little Begoña. That’s her story.
Bego and Isabel: Thank you very much. Goodbye.
[Music]
On the way to your house, we met up with Juanlu and stopped by a friend of yours’ shop.
Bego: Olga? Hi, Olgui.
Olga: What’s up?
Olga uses the iron a lot; she has a clothing store, so the noise you hear in the background, that steam, is the iron. She also had the radio on, and you kindly asked her to turn it off.
Bego: Turn off the music. She’s making a podcast about the story of my sister. And then I said, “No, let’s go to my friend Olga, she’ll tell you how she learned the story, what she knows, or when she found out.”
Olga: Well, I’ve known it forever, since I met her, Bego’s mother was a woman who always told us “Be quiet. No, don’t talk, don’t talk.” And it’s a story that stayed there and we didn’t really comment on it much in the group either.
Bego: But not all the friends knew, not all.
Olga: It’s true that some friends didn’t know. And I’ve moved in the Basque nationalist world and well, it’s something that was always denied, it was something that among people who are now 60, 65 years old, well, ETA hadn’t done it. I spent my whole life believing it had been ETA, but well…
So, it wasn’t just the man who worked at the town hall. People from your same group had also thought it might have been ETA.
Olga: But yes, with my group I lived the denial, and people who didn’t know. So of course, it was like, “Let’s see who it was, let’s not put ETA into this, killing a child.” I don’t care, it was an attack, I mean… She was a little girl and things happen and time passes… Lasarte is growing and I think that was kind of left behind… If as a mother you don’t transmit your pain, then little by little your neighbors… It gets forgotten.
Juanlu: ETA never denied it either. I don’t know if they were asked or not, but ETA could have said at that moment “It wasn’t us.”
Bego: Well, we have…
Olga: Well, well…
Bego: Thanks, Olga.
Isabel: Thank you very much.
[Music]
Bego: We’ll be in touch, Olgui…
Olga: Okay, goodbye.
Isabel: Goodbye. Should I close the door?
Olga: No.
Juanlu: No, she’s coming in.
Isabel: Oh, sorry.
Bego: You’ve met my friend Olga, right?
Isabel: I love her.
Bego: She’s as frank as they come. Goodbye. As frank as she is,
[Music]
I spoke with many more people from the town.
(Bego: Goodbye, Txema.)
But among all the neighbors in Lasarte…
(Bego: This is a neighbor of my parents…)
…there was a group I was very eager to speak with: Bizikidetza, the coexistence group of the town, the group that met with victims in Isabel’s kitchen, the group thanks to which I met you.
Isabel: Do you have a little more time, or do you have to leave?
Kesus: I just have to pick up some things at home.
Kike: If you invite us to dinner…
Isabel: Okay.
So one day, after going to visit you, I got together in a town venue with Kesus
Kesus: Kesus Marcos
Rosabel,
Rosabel: Rosabel Lausin
Peio
Peio: Peio Sasiein
and Kike.
Kike: Kike Intxausti, from Lasarte.
The first thing we talked about, as almost always with your story, was the silence.
Peio: The thing is, there was no information about it, meaning it didn’t come out…
Kike: It didn’t come out in the newspapers.
Peio: It wasn’t in the newspapers, but later in conversations…
They also told me something you yourself say many times.
Kike: I mean, for a long time it was considered collateral damage, nothing more. “Someone must have put a bomb and look, the poor girl died and such and such.” Not even collateral damage, an accident that happened. Who found out about it if no one found out? What is known is that it was a festival and they went there with the little white box of the girl and the party went on. And that was experienced very badly.
Rosabel: Very badly, yes. I think if people kept partying it wasn’t so much against the fact that this girl had died from a terrorist act or not terrorist, but because they didn’t even know. I want to believe that.
They also told me that in that context it was normal that your family thought it had been ETA. For two reasons.
Kike: Why? Because in Lasarte ETA planted bombs. So of course, since it was ETA and that was known and they said “gora ETA tirri tarra” and all that “gora ETA,” it’s normal they thought…
But there was another thing: they think a big part of the confusion about your sister’s case was because your family didn’t have what they call a “political family.”
Peio: If it hadn’t been those or some who disagree, they would have come because that’s what happened. Meaning if something happened to you, then you appeared on posters, they came to see you if you were… So if you didn’t appear in all that…
Meaning that if the Basque nationalists didn’t recognize you as one of their own victims, then people would automatically think you were a victim of the other side. And vice versa.
Peio: What they did know was that those who applauded the bombing didn’t say the other side was wrong. So I think normal people thought “Well, we don’t know if it’s ETA, but they are the ones.”
As you see, I’m not the only one who struggles to find the right words for what happened in our context of political violence.
Peio: They didn’t say to Begoña, they were telling them “No, listen, this is your side”… Nobody told them…
And so that thick, confusing silence became chronic, making it very hard to investigate. Until, one day, the focus started to shift. Not your family’s focus, but society’s focus.
Kike: What has happened is that in this century collateral damage is no longer accepted. People who suffered collateral damage have started to protest. I mean, a crazy thing was done and there was collateral damage; and another, and another collateral damage. Until they started doing terrorism wildly and started killing children in barracks and the Hipercor bombing, I don’t know how many people burned there. And things got complicated because those people started organizing and collateral damage was no longer accepted so easily.
[Music]
In our meeting, Peio, Kike, Rosabel, and Kesus talked a lot about the “neighborhood truth,” a term they use to refer to the truth that neighbors need to coexist.
Rosabel: And to make the truth known, right? Because at the end of the day, many times I know my truth, but I don’t know yours. And they’re so similar that when we talk and find out what you’ve gone through and what I’ve gone through…
They told me that, to build that “neighborhood truth,” they first had to think about who, for them, were the victims in the town.
Rosabel: And we even included those who unofficially, who didn’t have an official account, we also considered had been victims of this, right?
And to identify the victims, they used a report. Another report, another list. That report had been made by an association called Argituz, which means “shedding light, clarifying.” They published it in 2017 and titled it “Towards a Shared Memory.”
[Music]
That report lists the victims of human rights violations in Lasarte. That’s how Argituz calls them, victims of human rights violations, and that is also the criterion Bizikidetza follows to establish who the victims are.
[Music]
In the end, they came up with a list of 11 victims killed in the town: 6 victims of ETA, 2 victims of the Civil Guard, 1 person victim of the national police, one victim with unidentified perpetrators, and one victim of the DRIL—your sister. Some were complex cases, about which there is still no consensus even today, but for them, for the Bizikidetza group, they are part of that “neighborhood truth.”
[Music]
Afterwards, you know, they met with those victims in Ixabel’s kitchen. I asked them if they weren’t afraid of being called “equidistant” for talking about all victims without distinction of ideologies, or sides, or without differentiating perpetrators, however you want to call it.
Kike: Equidistance is seen badly from politics, but equidistance from an activity like what we have done is vital, because you can’t be in favor of one side that has suffered political violence and against another side that has suffered political violence. Because you are against political violence. That talk about equidistance is nonsense as big as a piano. Because…
Isabel: That phrase is going in. That phrase is going in.
Kike: No, it’s nonsense because, look, I have someone close to me that I will shake hands with because they have suffered and… But I don’t have to shake hands with that other one because they have a different ideology than this one.
[Music]
And one more thing: in that report made by the Argituz collective, “Towards a Shared Memory,” there is a section where they ask the town which events have impacted them the most over the years. And the first that appears is the assassination of your sister.
This episode ends, of course, in your kitchen, talking about the Bizikidetza meetings…
Juanlu: It was a very nice atmosphere. Very nice. It was exposing each victim’s pain.
Bego: Without judging, without judging if the other one, because you, what has he done to you… No. It’s simply that everyone exposed how badly they had suffered, what life they had led since what happened.
Talking about the cakes that Ixabel brought to those meetings
Bego: Yogurt. Milk, sugar, and flour, basically. Ixabel, who was wonderful, always made us that cake.
Isabel: Always the same?
But this episode also foretells something: more or less at the same time as the Lasarte tribute, the memory of your sister stopped being, in a way, a personal story, a story of your family, or a story of the town, and started becoming something increasingly public. Something that increasingly touched places with more power. Let’s say the plot was getting more and more complicated. And I wanted to know if you really wanted me to keep looking, if you really wanted to continue with this story.
Isabel: But also that you are aware that people will hear this afterwards.
Bego: Yes, yes.
Isabel: Yes, of course. That, for me, is very important that you know that, I’ve told you before, but like… Of course, I also doubt…
Juanlu: That’s why the question, are you sure?
Bego: Of course.
Juanlu: That’s why it’s the question, yes, if I understood you. If you are sure.
Bego: Yeah. But it’s also true that…
That is, if you were sure: because of what that could imply, also emotionally.
Juanlu: No, but also I think it’s even been good for you to do all this, it’s been good for you. Because knowing always the whole truth is very important.
Bego: Of course, we didn’t have that interest in digging deeper… That’s what we said.
Juanlu: It’s not easy, it’s just not easy to dig into that, unless you are…
Bego: Look, no, but you don’t dig… Look, Juan Luis. You don’t dig because at home they didn’t want you to dig. Because they didn’t want to dig, not telling you anything, not talking about it… So, if you are born in an environment where it’s not talked about, well, you stay there. It’s not talked about. It happened and that’s it.
[Theme]
Bego: Well, it’s going to move me, obviously.
Isabel: No, but I’m not talking about afterwards, it’s like… The process, right? And that you really don’t want to do it. This process that we are doing, I’m not talking about the result, you’ll see the result when you hear it, so…
Bego: Yes, no, because otherwise, I think I would have stopped you, right?
So, knowing that yes, that you wanted to continue, in the next episode, we leave Lasarte to see how your sister’s name was filling the public space of a whole country until reaching the very Congress of Deputies.
That, in the next episode.
