José Antonio Urrutikoetxea, known to the police and journalists as Josu Ternera, was arrested in France in 2019. He is on parole and currently lives in the French Basque Country. He is pending extradition to Spain, where he is accused of being in charge of ETA when he ordered and prepared the massacre of the Civil Guard barracks in Zaragoza in 1987. Eleven dead, five of them children .
Was Urrutikoetxea the head of ETA at that time and can therefore be considered the intellectual author or inducer of that crime? I’m sure Jordi Évole has asked about it. And he has also asked him for the attack in Vic, or for Carrero Blanco (it was in 1973, and Urrutikoetxea was already a member of ETA), or for the Catalan socialist Ernest Lluch, or for PP councilor Miguel Ángel Blanco, or even for the massacre of 11-M, which even the Abertzale leader Arnaldo Otegi condemned, or for his time as abertzale parliamentarian in Vitoria, or for his negotiations for peace with Jesús Eguiguren in 2005 -2006… ETA’s history is full of gaps, and the Producciones del Barrio documentary certainly helps to better understand a black page in Spain’s history.
It happens that around 330 murders committed by ETA currently lack a known perpetrator and that is why it is normal and humane that the prospect of the screening of the documentary about the head of the bloodthirsty gang generates virulent (preliminary) reactions against it. We will have to wait and see what it reveals and what it hides. But we wait.
Also with all certainty (as Évole himself has stated) the documentary is not kind to the interviewee. Journalistic and historical interest is guaranteed.
For now we know that Urrutikoetxea admits for the first time in Évole’s documentary to having participated in the murder of the mayor of Galdácano, Víctor Legorburu, in 1976. Criminally it does not count, because it predates the amnesty of 1977. But with all security gives tremendous strength to the film, which opens and closes with the testimony of who was Legorburu’s escort, Francisco Ruiz. Thanks to Producciones del Barrio, he discovers Urrutikoetxea’s participation in that action.
With 50 years of militancy, this man is the pure history of ETA. Why not listen to it? You must remember this phrase: “It is preferable that he takes his seat than that he takes a weapon”. He uttered it, when the terrorist leader was elected to parliament by Euskal Herritarrok, a certain José María Aznar. Year 1998.
