FACTS

- On March 21, 2000, ETA planted an explosive device at his parents’ home. He was the target, but the terrorists mistook his name for his father’s.

- Following the attack, he decided to live outside the Basque Country with his family, where he returned in early 2011.

CONSEQUENCES

“The day of the attack, March 21, 2000, I was working at the newspaper. It was eve of a major change we were going to introduce at the company. A change in philosophy to produce a modern daily paper rather than the more traditional outlook we had had until then. We were going to change many things. In addition, I had been managing the political section and, from then, I was going to be in charge of something completely different, of the new social, cultural, new trend section. It was a radical change. I had been in charge of the political section throughout some difficult years and I was going to change”.

“I was engaged in organising the new section, with the chaos that can be imagined the day before a change of this magnitude takes place. We had been preparing everything for a long time but, at the last moment, it seemed as if not everything was going to go as planned, although, in the end, it all worked out. I received a phone call and they told me to go home because there had been – I can’t remember the exact wording – a terrorist attack or a bomb. I took a taxi and went home”.

“I had been assured that my parents were unharmed, but I had that feeling that they weren’t telling me the truth and that there was more to it than what I had been told. I was suffering. It seemed that the approximately four kilometre taxi ride would never end, that I would never get home. When I arrived there was an ambulance at the door, people everywhere, journalists, sirens… When I went upstairs there was still smoke, rubble and a gas cylinder, latex gloves, the police… The door was shattered. I went in. My parents were there and I they were OK. I have always thought it was a miracle because, according to the information that I remember the Ertzaintza (Regional Police) gave me, they had apparently placed two gas cylinders with the idea of making one explode to create confusion and then making the other one explode to catch people off their guard. But the trigger mechanism on the second cylinder failed, so it didn’t explode”.

“My retired parents were at home. My mother was busy in the kitchen making dinner and my father was reading the newspaper when he heard a noise on the staircase outside. He was going to have a look when the bomb went off. He told me a blast of fire came in under the door and he instinctively jumped in the opposite direction, towards the window”.

“Why did they target me? It seems that the attack was really against the newspaper. I guess they targeted me because they knew the address and I was an easy target. Prior to the attack I had not had any type of warning”.

“The phone was ringing all the time. I received telegrams, cards, letters of encouragement… That’s when I realised that those things you don’t really value when you have to do them, really are important. Many times you do them simply because you think you have to. Well, no. They are important, very important. They are important because at that time I felt the warmth and kindness that I really needed to overcome that incident”.

“I remember a hand-written card of encouragement. It said that I shouldn’t worry, that he had also been targeted but that we had to resist and keep on fighting. I didn’t know who it was, but I later found out it was Jose Luis Lopez de Lacalle. Try to imagine what I felt when they killed him a few days later”.

“Even though I was the target, the police told me that ETA had planted the bomb at my parents’ home because my father and I have the same name and it seems their information had not been updated. During a conversation, I told my wife that it had been a double misfortune that the attack had been at my parents’ house… That it would have been better if they had attacked my house. Then she said: What about your daughter?  Reactions are not always carefully considered”.

“At that moment I made two decisions. One was to try to prevent that incident from hurting me, i.e., leave it at that. The other was to leave, above all, thinking about my daughter. I was happy in Bilbao, my city, where I had been born, and I have always loved and enjoyed it. It’s in my heart. I used to live opposite the river and…. But, for the sake of my daughter….you start asking yourself questions and I decided I had to leave. I am lucky because I have not suffered any physical consequences, although I have been affected psychologically. My father was elderly and just after that his health began to fail. He died two years later and I think the attack may have had something to do with it”.

“One of the last things that I remember him telling me when he was in hospital was to leave. I talked to my wife and we agreed to move. I raised the issue at the company; they told me that there were opportunities open to me and to think about it carefully so as not to make a rash decision. After two years, they asked me again whether I still wanted to leave. I went to Valencia, where I lived for seven years, and then to Malaga, until I returned to the Basque Country at the beginning of 2011″.

“I must say that I tried to leave all this behind.  But I do remember noticing certain gestures; like some of my neighbours who I thought would have been affected but they only left a card saying we are very sorry, instead of coming to me and giving me a hug if they really felt anything. They didn’t want to get involved”.

“When I left, one of the mistakes I made was not telling my daughter anything. She was 5 years old and I thought it wouldn’t be necessary. In Valencia she seemed rather withdrawn: she didn’t like the school, she didn’t fit in with friends… She sometimes seemed to be sad, shut off in a corner. I once asked her what the matter was and, looking into my eyes sobbing, she said, you already know what it is. The problem was that she regretted leaving Bilbao. We thought she was too young to be affected by these things, but we were wrong. It was a surprise because I realized that I should have taken her into account before taking this step”.

“You keep asking yourself, Where am I?  After a few years of not wanting to talk or see anything about all this, a friend who was going to make a film based on witness accounts called me. I agreed because I was just starting to change the way I was dealing with all this. I remember that, among those people giving testimonies, there was another “exiled” journalist from Bilbao who said she was happy in Madrid, that she had done very well at a radio station where she was treated with affection. She was living quite well in a house where she felt comfortable. But she ended her testimony by saying that she felt loved and well received but that “not a day goes by without asking myself: what on earth am I doing in Madrid?”. And that was something I remember because I had not been able to face it myself before. But I was feeling the same”.

“We abandoned our environment and went to Valencia. Since then, I have been living here and there, far from my family and friends. This situation is still the same, but now the other way round, because only I have been able to return. I hope we will all be able to get together again one day, like the emigrants from the past”.

“One of the things I have realised over this time is that once you go, it is more difficult to control your own life. If you’re settled here, where you were born and where you have your roots, if anything happens you can control it better. When you leave, in the end, you can see the mess you get into; you don’t have everything under control. Your family is here and there… I decided I wanted to return, and I do not want to leave again, I want to die here”.

“From a professional point of view, I have been lucky in that I work for a company that let me leave and then let me return. Now I am happy at my job and I also believe it is a very interesting time for the type of work I do. There’s a lot of work to be done and it is also a very exciting time for journalism”.

“I wouldn’t want to say whether the profession has been consistent and supportive; I’d say that about people or of certain media. In my case, my newspaper has done all it could. The work performed has been absolutely responsible, involved, taking risks and also defending values of solidarity…. In fact, this attitude has also been built on the fact that I was targeted, that a manager from another newspaper from the same group was killed or that they planted a bomb at the newspaper offices. Our position is well-known: unambiguous and firm defence of democracy. But, indeed, part of the media or other journalists have another point of view and the corporatism among colleagues has not been effective”.

“I recently read an article about the former editor of Egin. He complained that there had not been much solidarity after the closure. I don’t think that was done correctly. In addition, the case involving Egunkaria includes rulings that have shown that things had not been done properly. Perhaps, journalists did not display enough solidarity with the fact of “closing a newspaper”.

“I remember that before leaving, there used to be a newspaper director of a nationalist mentality who commented, as proof of his moderation and humility, that he often travelled to work on the underground. That was a luxury, because many people couldn’t take the underground to go to work. I even had to change itineraries; the police recommended that I didn’t take public transport, or at least not at the same time every day… The director of my newspaper has had and still has to go around with a bodyguard. What wouldn’t he give to be able to take the underground? As has been the case with the rest of society, some people have lived in fear and others haven’t had any trouble and knew that they were not going to have any trouble”.

“I believe that we are all looking forward to the end of all this. I don’t think this is something that only some of us are suffering. I would like to understand some people who, quite wrongly, have dedicated their lives to horrific causes that I suppose they considered they had to do and I would like to think that they also want all this to end. But they should take more steps in that direction”.

“I am very concerned that this gives the impression that we are going through a stage where, although things are better, we do not seem to be better off. We don’t seem to be able to agree on a “memorial day” or on events to celebrate the end of terrorism. I am also worried that this miraculous situation that has arisen, where no victim is seeking “an eye for an eye”, may lead to such a situation when members of the different parties find themselves in each other’s company more often. That’s why everything has to be arranged and certain things should not, perhaps, be done so quickly“.