Scala case: "No one has ever given us explanations"

45 years ago the Scala nightclub in Barcelona was the target of an attack. Four workers died. Today his children have returned to the place that the premises occupied to commemorate, for the first time, the tragic event with an act organized by the Barcelona City Council. “Something for which it is never too late,” Antonio Egea, son of one of the victims, confesses with gratitude, since “no institution had previously remembered us.”

Antonio attends us to remember how his life changed from that moment on. At that time, he was 14 years old and he found out about the fire on television, together with his mother, Adelaida, while they waited for Ramón to return to eat. “My father could have been saved because at the time of the fire he was doing maintenance tasks in the same hall, but he wanted to go in to help his colleagues who were inside the building,” recalls his son.

The balance of that accident was tremendously horrible, “my father, my cousin, a neighbor and another colleague died there,” admits Egea, still emotional. They were Juan López Masip, Bernabé Bravo, Diego Montoro and his father, Ramón Egea, young people with families and a future ahead of them that was shattered by the launch of Molotov cocktails over the main door of Scala.

Regarding the authorship of the attack, Antonio is clear, “the seven defendants confessed the facts and were arrested and imprisoned for it.” That it is considered that a police agent was behind the actions of the members of the CNT who launched the incendiary combos, “does not change anything.” At this point, Egea insists that “no one has ever explained anything to us, we have been neglected and helpless for a long time” and that the reconstruction of the events has been carried out on their own initiative and through newspaper libraries.

With an act of homage and remembrance and in memory of the four deceased on January 15, 1978, the Barcelona City Council intends to repair the debt that the institutions had with these victims, recognizing that this act comes 45 years late, “for which We convey our apologies and regret the institutional mistreatment to which they were subjected”, expressed the councilor for citizen rights and participation, Marc Serra, during the unveiling of the commemorative plaque.

‘Death and destruction’, that’s how conclusive the cover of La Vanguardia defined the events that happened that January 15, 1978, in the Scala nightclub in Barcelona. Three words that described the photographs that made up the first page and that reflected the horror that the city experienced due to an “unspeakable attack” that finally ended the lives of four workers of the emblematic establishment. As the rubble was removed and the bodies of the deceased were recovered, the police identified and arrested the seven perpetrators who threw Molotov cocktails at the very entrance of the room and who caused the terrible fire.

While the police linked the responsibility of the attack with the National Confederation of Workers (CNT), the Iberian Anarchist Federation and Juventudes Libertarias, the union itself was quick to deny the accusation and take legal action against the security forces and bodies. According to the CNT, they were facing a conspiracy against the union for its opposition to the Moncloa Pact. The confederation wondered what sense it would make to perpetrate the attack in the well-known restaurant and theater when three quarters of the workers were affiliated with the CNT. However, the four workers who died belonged to the UGT and were active in the PSOE, something for which Antonio Egea stands out with indignation, “because nobody has highlighted it in all this time.” But the truth is that these anarchist associations held a demonstration nearby that was more peaceful than some wanted.

Twenty years after that fateful day, the Association of Victims of Terrorism managed to get the Ministry of the Interior to consider the deaths at Scala victims of terrorism and to apply the corresponding compensation to the widows of that tragedy. According to Robert Manrique, at that time delegate in Catalonia of the Association Victims of Terrorism, “a photograph of the Minister of the Interior, Adolfo Martín Villa, handing over a check to one of the widows, motivated us to pull the thread and ensure that those who died in that fire were considered victims of a terrorist act.” “If not, what was the point of a minister delivering a check to the widow of a worker who officially died due to a work accident?” Manrique questions.

Now, 45 years later, he continues to ponder on the memory of the events whether what happened in Barcelona was terrorism or perhaps an act of state terrorism, addressing the mystery and doubts that arose shortly after the fire. The judicial investigations pointed out that Joaquín Gambín Hernández, a police agent infiltrated in the command that attacked, recognized that he had been hired by the police to dismantle the Catalan CNT. And, presumably, who incited the seven union members to launch the incendiary mixes.

For municipal officials, the executing hand of the State is still present in the suspicions that are made from hindsight. Thus, for the councilor for democratic memory of the Barcelona City Council, Jordi Rabassa, “the Spanish transition had a lot of blood and victims”, so “it is necessary to continue investigating the police and state brutality” that occurred at that time to “find out which They were the foundations of our democracy.”