BACKGROUND

- On February 22, 2000, ETA murdered her son, Jorge Diez Elorza, a regional policeman and bodyguard for Fernando Buesa, in a car bomb attack that killed both of them.

CONSEQUENCES

“For me it is as if it happened yesterday. It’s something I cannot erase from my memory or my mind. That feeling that I couldn’t hold him by the hand and tell him mummy is here is a feeling that tortures me and startles me every day and every night. It’s a feeling that is torturing me and I am unable to overcome it”.

“I have accepted Jorge’s death, I have no choice. But I’m not going to allow myself to be victimized. I don’t want to be a sad and bitter woman, mother, grandmother, because neither my daughter or my granddaughter or my father or my family deserve that”.

“Before I could look away from the TV, I saw my son lying on the ground, on a billboard and covered with a blanket, but I could see his shoes and I recognised him by his shoes”.

“Where were my Basque people? Where were my politicians? All you can do is just go on working, doing things and reaching agreements. But not allow one idea to prevail above all others. That’s where the murderers find support”.

“In the end, what we all want is a solution. I think the vast majority do not want revenge. I, for one, don’t want revenge. I have hated the terrorists and I hate them, but I do not want revenge. I’ve never been vindictive in my personal life or after my son’s death”.

“His male cousins were 10 and 8 years old. How can you explain to those two children that they had killed their cousin? Why, who, for what reason? We couldn’t explain it to them because they wouldn’t understand. We adults can’t understand it no matter how much we seek answers or some type of justification. There isn’t any. But how do you explain to an eight and a ten year old that they have killed their cousin? It’s impossible, and I mean that these children, who are16 and 14 today, have been marked forever by their cousin’s death”.

“I gave birth to my son in pain and blood. It was after what happened when I felt that Jorge really hadn’t wanted to leave my womb because they literally had to pull him out. I feel as if it was like a 26 year reprieve and, in the end, they took him away from me in pain and blood. But how different is the blood that gives life from the blood that ends in death”.