There are two ways of explaining the barbarism that Barcelona suffered on June 19, 1987, starting at the end or at the beginning. Both are meaningless. If we start at the end, it would be necessary to say that the four ETA terrorists who perpetrated the most bloody attack by the band have now been free for at least five years, despite having been sentenced to hyperbolic sentences. And only one, Rafael Caride, has apologized.
If we start at the beginning, it would be necessary to say that on June 19, 1987, at 4:80 p.m., the mouth of hell opened in Barcelona. Shortly after, Europa Press and Efe began to flood the room of Jordi Moreno, Amadeu Larruy, Xavi Castillo and all his fellow teletypewriters. Several lines with a bell and four words: “Explosion in the Meridiana”. The Vanguard was still at half throttle.
Among the few editors who had already arrived, Santiago Tarín and the author of this series. And, above all, the great Francisco González Ledesma (1927-2015), sentimental notary of a Barcelona that was disappearing, as well as a writer, journalist, lawyer and author of unforgettable Western novels who signed himself as Silver Kane, one of his heteronyms. . Those of us who loved him, and in this house we were legion, called him simply Paco.
He didn’t need teletypes because his daughter, who worked in a clinic next to the Hipercor building and who was fortunately fine, had just called him a nervous wreck. “Dad, a bomb!” Was the only thing he managed to say. We newbies proposed to immediately go there by taxi. “No, the accesses will be collapsed. We will go faster by metro, ”said Paco with his proverbial lucidity. Another senior lesson.
Forgive the petulance. I hate that journalism sounds like a race, but we’re the first. So much so that when the police cordon was installed, I stayed inside (in the mess they would mistake me for a plainclothes inspector and nobody kicked me out). Jordi Juan, today my director and then event editor for El Periódico de Catalunya, smiled at me and winked at me with complicity and healthy envy from the other side of the cordon.
Hours passed. The duty judge arrived, Modesto Aríñez, whom a woman once mistook for a priest in the courthouse: “Father, father, I want to confess!” The judicial entourage entered Hipercor and started down the steps to the basement. The smoke and the smell were stifling. As I passed the cash registers, I saw a shopping cart, a mute witness to the horror, hastily abandoned.
My heart was beating wildly. He knew he shouldn’t be there. I was a pipiolo: not even a year ago I had been hired by the flagship of the Catalan press. Suddenly, the judge said: “Here you can’t see anything.” And I stung like a linnet. Instead of keeping quiet, I got smart: “I’ve seen flashlights near the cash registers!” Everyone turned to me. Also, oh, Josep Anton Rosell. And with a face of few friends.
Josep Anton (1938-2018), a great movie buff, was then press officer for the Civil Government (later he was director of El Periódico de Andorra). He recognized me: “What the hell are you doing here? Out!”. End of the adventure. While I was trying to descend into hell, Santiago Tarín and Paco González Ledesma focused on the only important thing: the wounded, the firefighters with their faces blackened, the hallucinated survivors, the anguished families…
Santi retired last year, but fortunately he is still involved in other joyous literary projects. Paco, the great Paco, passed away in 2015, at the age of 87. Goodbye to a time. He entered La Vanguardia on March 17, 1957 and retired on April 1, 1993. Although he still had notable titles to publish, he already had a solid and award-winning literary career behind him, based on characters such as Inspector Méndez .
Tender, sentimental and disappointed, Méndez knows that laws are not always fair and that the most important thing is people. When they took me out of Hipercor embarrassed, I remember looking at Santi and Paco. I will repeat it one more time: they only had eyes for the wounded, the firefighters with blackened faces, the survivors who wandered hallucinated, the distraught families who searched in vain for their loved ones…
Journalism must peer into the abyss without fear of the abyss staring back at it. Hipercor’s barbarism caused 21 deaths and 46 injuries, including a baby that had not yet come into the world. His mother, a cashier, was pregnant. That girl is 35 years old today and her name is Jessica López. She has learned to speak and to read the lips of her interlocutors. She was born deaf as a result of the explosion. No one has ever apologized to him…
Added to ETA’s savagery was institutional helplessness. In 2017, the Parliament of Catalonia honored the victims and seated the families in the fourth row, behind the politicians. Quite a metaphor, which denounced Hipercor’s wound. This exhibition was held on the occasion of the thirtieth anniversary of a savagery with a date (June 19, 1987, at 4:00 p.m.) and an image (an abandoned cart).
I will never know if the owner of that cart survived the fireball. But I do know that this story is terrible, whether it begins at the beginning or at the end. And also that we have to dive into the pain of others without sensationalism, with respect and without forgetting the most important thing in the job: people. Soon I will be the age of Inspector Mendez’s father when we took the subway to Hipercor. I hope one day to be as tender, sentimental, and disappointed as he is. And like you, Paco.
Another version of this text was published on our website on Friday, May 6, 2022.
