FACTS:

- In May 2006, the police informed her that her name had appeared in some papers intercepted from ETA.

-She has been working in the municipal police force for over  twenty years.

CONSEQUENCES:

“I’ve been working in the municipal police force for twenty-five years. In May 2006, I was called, together with other colleagues from the municipal police force, and informed that our names had appeared in some papers belonging to ETA. My name appeared because some colleagues and I had been working as bodyguards for some council members belonging to the Socialist Party for a few months.”

“I was really affected by all this. I had just adopted a baby girl a few months before they told me that I was on those papers. I’m a single mother. It was a great shock. It’s really scaring; a lot. You start thinking and you know that when they have a policeman in their sights, they are not just going to try and frighten him or her. I understood that if they attacked me, I would probably not survive. The baby girl was going to suffer, and that is why it overwhelmed me so much.”

“You eventually get over it, or you try to. I went back to work, with the same people, the same colleagues again; something that I did not like at all. In 2007, during the municipal elections, I had to go to a polling station to supervise everything and we had a confrontation with people from ANV. I had to go to court to testify about that. It was a very direct confrontation. I felt extremely exposed. They didn’t know what I was carrying, of course, but it was a decisive moment for me. I went to pieces. I couldn’t handle the pressure. I didn’t want to go to court to testify, I was afraid; I didn’t want to put myself in any further danger. I had a really bad time.”

“I sought help from a victims’ association. I looked on-line to see if anyone could help me out. I realized I was not classified as a victim, but as someone who is being persecuted. Therefore, I was totally unprotected and unattended. In the end, I don’t even know how, I managed to speak with people from Madrid, and they gave me some advice”.

“I started to fall. I was depressed. I wasn’t paying enough attention to the girl. She didn’t realize, but I did, and I was really affected. I also got in touch with the victims’ office of the Basque Government. I spoke to Maixabel Lasa, the director. They provided psychological counselling.”

“The fact that I am alone is very important to me. My daughter has only got me. I didn’t want to tell my family at first. Then, I had to tell them and they were really shocked. I’ve always been very tough and when they saw I wasn’t well they were alarmed.”

“For me this has been a source of problems, fear, anxiety, and above all economic troubles. I have spent a fortune on the baby, because I dare not leave her with anyone. I know it has been a while now, but you always wonder how far that file on a computer has gone, because, today, my name may still be in the hands of anyone.”

“All I have asked for – sometimes I’m embarrassed to admit – is a card to be able to park in the centre so as to be able to collect my child with the car and move around the city. I feel more comfortable in my car, I can move around easier, I’m calmer.”

“I have not had any support from my colleagues. No-one has shown any interest in me or for my other colleagues who appeared on that list. People’s indifference really hurts. I can’t talk about it with anybody at work because it’s just not done. There are many people who support the terrorists. Now, I feel better, but at first, when I went back to work with these people, I was very difficult.”

“The origin of all this was in the 1990s when ETA started murdering politicians and thing started to get tough. The city council organised some courses to train the municipal police in bodyguard duties. I’m very proactive and I’ve always liked to learn things, and so I joined. More out of restlessness and to be prepared.”

“Having done that silly course, I was assigned directly to the escort service because there were hardly enough trained people for that task. I didn’t like the job, but I had to do it and I did. That’s where it all began. Those of us who had signed up for the course and had been protecting people – in my case, for only eight months – were marked. The first ten or eleven of us who started working as bodyguards were the ones who appeared on that list.”

“The problem is that it had to be someone from inside the municipal police force who gave them our names. In fact, there have been several arrests within the municipal police force. That list belonging to ETA only included those of us from the first course, the first ten or eleven, nobody else. Only someone from inside could have got that information, it wasn’t public.

“All this has affected all aspects of my life. I was given a medical certificate stating that I could not work with motorbikes, traffic duties, because I felt very insecure”.

“I felt ignored and forgotten. No-one has taken any notice of my case until very recently when I started to talk to people from ZAITU. Until then I felt unprotected and alone. It was difficult to decide to do this interview and tell my experience, because the truth is that I felt extremely abandoned by everybody.”