FACTS:

- In 2005, when he was 27, he was appointed secretary general of the Socialist Youth Organisation in Arrasate-Mondragón. 

- Shortly after his appointment, he was attacked for the first time. Someone threw some fireworks at him while he was walking his dog in a park. The leadership of his party immediately assigned bodyguards to protect him. 

- In 2007, he was became councillor in the municipality of Mondragon for the PSE-EE(Socialist Party of the Basque Country) and has been the spokesman of his municipal group since 2009. 

-On March 7, 2008, on the closing day of the general election campaign, ETA murdered his colleague Isaías Carrasco. He heard the shots, being only a short distance away, and he immediately went to the scene of the murder, where he was unable to do anything to save his colleague’s life. 

-Over the past five years he has received four letters from ETA. He received the first one at his private address. The other three were placed in the Arrasate town hall mailbox belonging to the socialist group. The letters did not indicate any sender or have any stamp. Someone had placed them in the municipal mailbox. 

- The harassment is constant.  Among many episodes, he described the threatening graffiti that someone painted opposite his second home, which is outside Mondragón, and which no one knew he had at the time of the threats. 

- During the interview he told us how, on the day before the interview, new messages had been painted on walls in favour of ETA and ETA prisoners. 

CONSEQUENCES:

“I spent much of my time studying away from home. When I came back, I joined the PSE-EE but I had had no previous connection with this party. The source of the problem is that, as my parents are nationalists, everyone assumed that I would become a nationalist too. In town, when one publicly states they are socialist or a constitutionalist, the link with nationalism is broken. And it’s even worse, because as I’m from Mondragon, I studied and grew up here, and after being away, studying in San Sebastian and Madrid… when you return, they feel the betrayal; being born Basque and speaking Basque, you should feel those Basque roots, yet you’re a traitor to your country, you’re not a nationalist, you’re worse than anybody else.  The attacks began just after my appointment as secretary general of the Socialist Youth Organisation in my town. Like I said, everyone knew I came from a nationalist family and that I speak Basque – it was all so sudden”. 

“And it was then, when I was appointed secretary general of the Socialist Youth Organisation in Mondragon, that the first attack took place. They threw some fireworks at me when I was walking my dog. It’s a miracle I wasn’t injured. The party leadership in Gipuzkoa immediately called me and told me they were going to assign a special escort service”. 

“It’s very hard to see how people who studied with me up to the end of Secondary School, colleagues and classmates of a lifetime, have stopped talking to me. They keep out of the way because they know that any kind of relationship with me could be damaging for them. Sometimes they greet me from a distance, but they don’t stop to talk. That makes me feel rejected. In addition to being threatened, you find you have no normal social life. You can only be with people who belong to the party and with other party colleagues if you want to socialise, go out for a drink. That’s the worst part for me because it limits your personal and family relationships. They also suffer the situation I’m living. I’ve had to endure the villagers pointing at them in the street. Even knowing that I have bodyguards, my family is sometimes afraid to go to an restaurant for a family meal. They say: “What if someone comes in?” There are also people in the family who are still reluctant to be seen with me”. 

- He stressed the changes that have occurred in his social relationships: 

“It’s tough. You go from a normal life, going out with your cousins for a few drinks at night, to staying at home. And, in part, it’s my fault, because, in many cases, so as not to place your friends and family at risk, you stay away. And that is counterproductive for those living under threat. We should be changing it, we should be seen more often, because, ultimately, we’re seen as freaks. You also have to listen to your bodyguards. Sometimes they suggest it would be better to go to another town to go out with friends. I always try to go out for a beer, but it’s annoying for me and for those who go out with me because, sometimes, my friends want to go to a certain bar and it’s difficult to know whether they are in favour of radicals or not in that bar and you have to be careful. The atmosphere is stifling. I have a second home outside Mondragón, and that enables me to relax a bit some days. But I have two homes, with the cost that implies”.  

“I could tell a thousand anecdotes and a thousand stories. For example, during the “salve” (prayers) that we usually hold during the festivities of San Juan in June in the village, we always have problems. But they’re cowards. When they see you have bodyguards, they know they aren’t going to get away with saying or doing something and so they’re very careful. On one occasion, when I was leaving a plenary meeting, a complicated meeting at which we had been talking about the prisoners, they told me I was going to be the next one”. 

“Another thing that happens is that the Mayor does not allow CCTV cameras in the plenary sessions. No images are recorded. Only audio. There may be news cameras when the media is present, although there’s no CCTV system to record what’s happening. However, there are people at the plenary sessions who, without saying anything, make gestures with their hands like a gun, pull faces or stare at me during my speeches to try to make me nervous. Furthermore, after some plenary sessions, when I come out, people milling around the door have pushed or insulted me”. 

“In all, I have received four letters from ETA. Days after receiving the last one, in January 2010, they painted threatening graffiti on my second house, the one I have outside Mondragon, which is extremely suspicious, because no one knows of this second home. However, I will probably have to give it up. I received that last letter in the Town Hall. Except for the first one, which was sent to my parents’ home, the others have been left in the town hall mailboxes, without any stamp. They have entered the town hall. They have entered the institution and someone has personally placed the letters in the mailbox.  It’s even worse, because it displays the unsafe situation in which we work at the town hall. Nobody controls who enters and who leaves the building. There is no kind of security system. This is one of the most serious things that have happened and we have not been able to solve it because the ANV, which is in power, doesn’t want to”. 

“When I received the first letter at the town hall, I mentioned it to the mayor during a work meeting we had. I told her I had just received a letter from ETA and I wanted to know what she thought. I asked whether there was any type of security control at the entrance of the building. There are some local police at the door. I couldn’t understand how no-one had witnessed what had happened”. 

“But the toughest thing was when they killed Isaías. That morning we were handing out roses to the people, we were on the campaign trail. A colleague and I went to have lunch at a nearby bar. We heard the shots. We ran to his house and found him lying on the floor, dying”. 

“It was very hard to see how, out of 362 civil servants working at the town hall at the time, only 2 came to the office to express their condolences personally. The truth is that many people turned up at the demonstration three days later. But the vast majority were from other parts of the Basque Country. I clearly remember how, from the head of the demonstration, I could see people looking on from balconies, hidden behind curtains, people who were afraid to come down. I think that is tremendously significant”. 

“On the other hand, the wall of shame (a mural with pictures of ETA prisoners located in a central street of Mondragón) continued in place until Patxi López took office. When they killed Isaías, I think the radicals themselves took away the pictures, because they knew the atmosphere was heating up. But they soon put them back again, using a system that made them even more difficult to remove”.  

“But these things happen. People change temporarily, but times goes by and, unfortunately, the death of a person is forgotten and it seems that nothing has changed in Mondragón. The photographs of ETA terrorists are now reappearing on the streets.  But nobody remembers Isaías. He isn’t remembered because the rest of the political groups didn’t want to support an initiative put forward by the Socialist Party to build a monolith or something in memory of the victims, not only in memory of Isaías, because there have been other murders in Mondragon; thirty years ago they killed three civil guards… well, there have been other cases. Nobody remembers the victims in our town and that is something we have to deal with. We also put forward an initiative to include Mondragón in the “memory map” and that was also rejected; not only due to the opposition of ANV but of other groups, such as Aralar, EA, PNV, Alternatiba. “  

“I understand that Mondragon is still a tough town, where the radicals feel strong, and where it will be difficult to mend fences in the light of recent election results. It’s is a very difficult situation”. 

“Day to day life in the city council is tense. We are the second largest political force in the Mondragon city council. Before Isaías was killed, relationships, although tense, were correct, we could cooperate on certain issues. Then, after everything that happened after the assassination, relations have been and are hostile, on their side and on ours. There is no chance of an agreement, there is no space for cooperation, no personal relationships; we don’t talk about anything. And they also hold us accountable for the fact that the mayor was jailed for three months, because we must remember that the mayor has been charged for collaborating and belonging to an armed group. So, in this impasse, all personal and political relationships have broken down. Another thing that led to this situation was that, during certain festivities, such as the drum parade at night, a 10 metre banner was displayed opposite the town hall with my name and that of another councillor, holding us responsible for the jailing of the mayor. I asked the Deputy Mayor to withdraw the banner. She said she wouldn’t. Furthermore, she reaffirmed that I and my party were responsible for the jailing of the mayor for having reported the mayor for failing to condemn Isaías’ murder. I replied that these were two different issues; one thing is to be charged with belonging to an armed band and another is not rejecting Isaías’ murder”. 

“They ignore us in the town hall, the rules governing plenary sessions are not observed and we are not notified of many things. Now (January 2011), the budget has been passed and they didn’t even call me, as the spokesperson for my group, to see if we wanted to negotiate anything. They speak to all the groups, except us.  In the past, we were involved in negotiations for the good of the town council, to help make things work. And now, if it were not for the existence of a budget item totalling €24,000 to help the relatives of ETA prisoners, we would be able to reach some type of agreement. But, with that item on the table, we cannot enter into negotiations of any kind”. 

“I can’t see them changing anything in this aspect. Yesterday morning (the day before the interview, January 2011), pro-ETA graffiti appeared all over the town of Mondragón once again.  Consequently, the atmosphere in Mondragón remains the same. And the mayor, instead of sending cleaning crews out, as ordered by the Department of the Interior, leaves the graffiti for the 48 hour limit that the law provides in order to make the pressure felt on the streets.”