Txiki, between the wind and the silence
<em>"–You should have made another end; / you deserved, hypocrite, a wall / another fenced. Your dictatorship, / your fucking life as a murderer."</em>
Joan Brossa, <em>End, </em>1975
Today 50 years ago, five minutes past eight thirty in the morning, Jon Paredes Manot, Little one, He was executed in a forest clearing near the Can Catà road, then a military base. A platoon of volunteer Civil Guards murdered him at dawn after a charade of a military trial. The death row that dawned had begun in Burgos with the execution of Ángel Otaegi, and would close in Hoyo de Manzanares with the execution of FRAP militants Xosé Humberto Baena, Xosé Luís Sánchez Bravo, and Ramón García Sanz. Two young Basques, two young Galicians, and a young man from Murcia. They were the last five death sentences carried out by the Franco dictatorship, through a military summary and with a semblance of legalism. It can never be said that they were the last deaths of the executioners' orgy of blood. Only six months later, the young Oriol Solé Sugranyes was killed, after escaping from Segovia. Just seven months later—another death knell—the massacre of the Vitoria workers took place. And then Montejurra. And then the lawyers of Atocha, Javier Verdejo, Gustau Muñoz, and so many others. There isn't enough space to house the political violence of the Transition, but there is enough to emphasize the paradox that the Portuguese Carnation Revolution left only 19 dead. exemplary and peaceful Democratic transition, on the other hand, close to 700. 50 years in freedom.
Eighteen months before that September 27th, whose parents still remember exactly where they were, Salvador Puig Antich had been executed by the vile method of garroting in Barcelona's Modelo prison. Eighteen months later, a young Basque man spent the last night of his life in the same prison, accompanied by lawyers Marc Palmés and Magda Oranich. He was, yes, Txiki, born in Extremadura, in Zalamea de la Serena, migrated to the Basque Country, and involved for life and death in the Basque national and social cause. There is more than one link between the two state crimes. The first, unfortunately, is the long amnesiac silence and the ongoing impunity for the crimes—and corruption, Josep Fontana would add—of the Franco regime. The second, that the Modelo prison will forever concentrate those two capital punishments: the last ones committed in Catalonia. And the third, as the blessed one always remembers Antoni Batista, that the first tomb that day held Txiki's lifeless remains was a sign of solidarity. It belonged to the family of Josep Lluís Pons Llobet, a member of the MIL. From the Puig Antich MIL.
Remembering those events today, when fascism howls in every corner of the planet, is not talking about the past. It is talking about that present. It is clearing up the (bad) outlook for the future. Some political events have decisively contributed to this. 50 years later, it must be said that at the scene of the events, in the Collserola mountain range, there is not a single institutional trace, from the perspective of democratic memory, of anything. The only plaque that remains at the site, which makes up for unforgivable oversights and commemorates the events, is the fruit solely of the popular, memorial, and neighborhood movement. But, on the contrary, and fortunately, it can also be added that, nevertheless, not a single year, since that fateful September of 1975, has there not been a popular act of homage and recognition. This morning, the Catalan Association of Former Political Prisoners of the Franco Regime will do so. Tomorrow, as every year, the collective will do so. Wind of FreedomAnd these days, Modelo has been filled with people remembering those last executions, and actor Sergi López has voiced Txiki's last letter. There are also simultaneous events in Madrid, Zarautz, Iruña, Vigo, and Murcia. Meanwhile, a Basque official responsible for democratic memory—and I'll spare you the qualifications—has said that those last executed men are both victims and victimizers. And no, he hasn't resigned yet. Victims based on what? Show trials of the sadistic cruelty of the darkness of a dictatorship?
Like every concrete event, revival, questions float by in torrents—and some still have no answers. It's easy to categorically affirm—reinforcing the official motto of "five decades in freedom"—that those who were truly free—and with public salaries and pensions—were those who tortured, prosecuted, convicted, and executed Txiki in Cerdanyola del Vallès. The democratic acid test comes out pretty grim, as you can see. In fact, we still don't even know the names of the members of the volunteer guerrilla who cracked it—a state secret of the dictatorship protected in democracy. A thousand questions for every story, Brecht suggested. Against the thick law of silence, memories, the rebellious memory of those who resisted and stood in solidarity then, in rigorous anti-fascist directness, sprout: an August of exceptions, the military and judicial pantomimes, the deafening silence of Txiki's last night at the Modelo. bird of the prisoners, the huge police device that crossed the city between the old prison and Collserola by the Meridiana, the repressive occupation of the cemetery, the charges, the cries of Gora Txiki! Long live Catalonia!, the sweater worn by the young Basque man knitted by the political figures who had made it for him, the photo of the corpse taken by Marc Palmés, its rapid clandestine dissemination throughout the world, the forbidden funerals and masses, the completely ignored pleas for clemency – from the Pope to Olof Palme – he defended him.
Of all the micro-stories that each macro-story contains, I'm left with two today—here now. Antònia Manot, Txiki's mother, died in July 2024 at the age of 94. But she always told the same story: that, in the impossible farewell in Barcelona, her son told her that she would lose one child, but thousands would be born to her in the Basque Country. She always explained that she didn't understand at the time, but that when she returned home, she suddenly found dozens, hundreds, of strangers who, whenever they saw her in Zarautz, would stop and call her warmly. Goodbye, love (Hello, mother). And so it was until the very end—Txiki's courageous mother, survivor and resister of history, as the mother of all. There is still another moment today that I was completely unaware of, until this July, when the dear August Gil Matamala explained it to me. From the same sinister day of the farcical trial, a military summary trial, there, in the same Military Government that still exists at the end of Las Ramblas. Just after Txiki's court statement, a lawyer, amid the stupor of the military courtroom, suddenly and passionately began to applaud the young Basque man—with the ensuing uproar, the cloud of other lawyers who tried to protect him, and the ultra-patriotic excitement in the courtroom. That simple gesture by lawyer Ruiz Capillas, almost like Socrates', yesterday broke the silence in a dictatorship in its death throes and today becomes the most solid compass. Breaking the silence in the courtroom. Of all the rooms in the world where the contemporary horrors of today are planned, while forcing us to forget yesterday. Against them, the wind, Txiki's wind of freedom, continues to blow.