FACTS

- On October 25, 1986, ETA planted a bomb and killed his sister, Daniela Velasco Domínguez de Vidaurreta, his brother in law, General Rafael Garrido Gil and his nephew, Daniel Garrido Velasco. General Rafael Garrido Gil was stationed in San Sebastian as Military Governor of Gipuzkoa.

- As a result of the effects of the blast, another 14 people were injured. Among them, the Portuguese citizen, Maria José Teixeira Gonçalves, who died on November 11 from the injuries sustained in the attack. Another person who was injured but survived was Pillar Calahorra, who suffered injuries to her left leg resulting in complications and pain until today.

CONSEQUENCES

“October 25th, 2011, was the 25th anniversary of the attack that took place on the main Boulevard in San Sebastian. The seriousness of this attack is not really due to the professional position of the person they had targeted, but to the fact that three persons from the same family were murdered in the blast. In this regard, it is the biggest crime committed by ETA within the Basque Country against one single family”.

“ETA was out to kill my brother in law, General Rafael Garrido Gil, who was the Military Governor of Gipuzkoa. It was a Saturday morning and he was going out with his wife, my sister, Daniela Velasco Domínguez de Vidaurreta. He was 59 and my sister 58. They were with my nephew, Daniel Garrido Velasco, the second youngest of six children. He was 21. He was studying to be a teacher and had started to study Law. He was also studying the Basque language and was very happy and integrated. His colleagues reacted very forcefully and very indignantly”.

“The attack also injured another 14 people, including a young mother, Maria José Teixeira Gonçalves, who died 17 days later from the very serious injuries sustained in the attack. She left two children, Florinda and Carlos, 13 and 5 years old, respectively. Another injured person, Pilar Calahorra, suffered serious injuries to one leg. The rest of the wounded were, in general, less severe, such as a small child, Jon Bilbao, who was with his father… “.

“That day was the anniversary of the Statute of Gernika. In other words, it seems that everything had a rather sinister meaning. It is difficult not to see an act of revenge in this matter, as in all attacks in general. It had been prepared meticulously. A motorcycle had been parked in an underground car-park near the military Government house. It is clear that this was no improvisation. When my brother-in-law’s car stopped at a traffic light, two terrorists came up to him on the motorcycle and placed a sports bag containing the bomb on the roof of the car. The terrorists drove away and the bomb exploded”.

“It was a Saturday and I had been at the Kutxa (Guipúzcoa and San Sebastian Savings Bank). When I reached home, some neighbours came out to meet me and told me to go up to my flat where my wife told me what had happened. We went to the hospital immediately but were only able to see my nephew. He was in one piece, but his hair was scorched. I was unable to see the bodies of my sister and my brother in law, because they had already been taken to the morgue for the autopsy”.

“The main authors of the attack were two men. The most well-known, Kubati, is still, as far as I know, in prison. He planted the bomb on the general’s car and killed three of the people inside. A Portuguese woman who was passing by received the full blast with lethal effects. The driver, thank heavens, survived. He was a conscript soldier called Jesús Norberto Febrer Lozano. According to his account, the General told him to get down as soon as he realised they were in imminent danger of death, as was the case. That saved him. He suffered a punctured eardrum and was lucky because it could have been much worse”.

“There was a lot of commotion. The Minister of Interior Affairs, the Lehendakari….. went to the funeral. There were lots of people. Those were the years when that was not an exceptional situation; terrorist attacks were rather regular occurrences. They had a second home in Jaca (Huesca) and their children, who were the true victims, because a brother is always less than a son or daughter, decided the funeral would be held there. I am the only family member who continued to live in the Basque Country, and that has made me an involuntary protagonist because they are the main victims, together with the people that were murdered. The funeral was in Jaca and feelings were even deeper because it was and is a town with lots of military detachments. My brother in law was born in Calahorra (La Rioja) but, since his early childhood, he lived in Zaragoza and that is where the family home was, except during the different postings he had”.

“In this case there was a sentence; in many other cases there were no sentence and the result has been impunity because the crimes prescribed. The sentence was given in 1991, five years after the attack, although with certain major shortcomings because, at that time, there was no solidarity law that protected the victims. Consequently, the compensation for civil liability was irrelevant as everyone knew that it was not going to be collected. A law in this sense did not appear until 1999. The sentence, in our case, also erred in that it stated that there was only one surviving son, when there were five, one that was only 16 years old, younger than Daniel. The State paid the compensation and what was given to the only surviving brother was shared among the five”.

“My brother in law was quite trusting. For example, the previous week we had been to the cinema and they had come to my house without even telling their escort. He was not obsessed with always being accompanied by a bodyguard. Before the attack, my family had not been victims of any attack or aggression, but there had been some graffiti that my brother in law had protested about and which resulted in even more. There were also threats. But there had never been any specific type of danger. My sister was always afraid when she heard news about terrorist attacks. They had been in San Sebastian for just under two years”.

“The overall response by society was good here, and extraordinary in Jaca. On the other hand, there was one negative detail – allegedly performed by university students. On the walls and roof of the Faculty of Philosophy they painted: The Garrido family went up in smoke like candles, mocking the tragedy… It seems inconceivable but that type of thing happened on a daily basis. As far as I am concerned, I live in a 17-story building with eight flats on each floor and I have never been treated incorrectly by anybody. I have never felt any contempt directed at me, although it is contempt enough when they kill a family member”.

“My brother in law had a brother, a military priest who was also a lawyer. He helped my nephews a lot in Zaragoza. I know they have needed psychological assistance. It has been very tough for them, but they have all come through it and now they all have families. They find a lot of support there. The Authorities have been very good to me also. I was a high-school professor and I applied for an assignment in Madrid to be with my ninety-year-old mother, who was perfectly lucid, and dealt with the pain in an exemplary manner (Daniela was her only daughter). That assignment implied that I would not lose my job here and that I could continue working in high-schools in another city”.