"I even slept with a shotgun in the room."

TorellóFrancoism was dying, but it wanted to go down fighting, and on September 27, 1975, the regime carried out its last five executions. Two alleged members of ETA and three from FRAP were shot after torture and a judicial process riddled with irregularities and flagrant injustices, in accordance with a law created specifically for this purpose and applied retroactively. The death sentences generated a huge wave of indignation and mobilizations both within and beyond Spain's borders, with attacks on many Spanish embassies. Pope Paul VI pleaded for "clemency," the president of Mexico called for Spain's suspension from the United Nations, and the president of Sweden walked through the streets of Stockholm with a collection box to raise money "for the freedom of Spain." But the regime responded with violence. In fact, the parish priest of Hoyo de Manzanares, the Madrid municipality where the FRAP members were executed, told Interview"More police arrived in buses to cheer the executions. Many were drunk. When I went to administer last rites to one of the men being shot, he was still breathing. A lieutenant approached and fired the coup de grâce without giving me time to move away. Blood splattered me."

That night, Aitor Aguirre and Sergio Manzanera, players for Racing Santander, were staying at the Hotel Rhin: the next day, the Santander team was hosting Elche in a First Division match. They tuned in to La Pirenaica radio station and heard the news. "We had to do something to protest. We were public figures and could give the issue a lot of attention so that people would mobilize and begin to realize that it was no longer the time to execute people for their beliefs," explains Aguirre (Sondika, Vizcaya, 1949), later a player for Athletic Club. "Things couldn't go on like that," recalls Sergio Manzanera (Valencia, 1950), league champion with Valencia in 1971.

On match day, they finalized their secret plan. José María Errandonea, a substitute, cut the laces of some boots and gave them to them when they were already in the locker room. "We waited until the last minute and put them on in a corner. Aitor to me and me to Aitor. If we had done it earlier, they wouldn't have let us go out. In the tunnel, a teammate noticed and asked us why and told us to take them off," we would have done it. But they went onto the pitch with the black laces on the left sleeve of their white shirts. "Little by little, word started to spread around the stadium," and the first whistles from the fans rang out in Santander, a city with a right-wing tradition. Half an hour into the game, Aguirre headed in a cross from Manzanera to make it 1-0.

When the first half ended, they found the tunnel to the dressing rooms full of police officers. They were told that they either had to remove their wristbands or they would be arrested. They complied. "We had already done what we had to do," they say. Miquel Sitjà, from Girona, equalized for Elche, but Racing won thanks to another goal from Aguirre in the 88th minute. That year he was the second-highest scorer in La Liga, behind Quini. When the match ended, they were told that they had to go to the police station the next day.

They claim that it was clear the police were out to get them and that their status as prominent figures saved them. “They were telling me, ‘Well, let him do it, he’s Basque… but you, being Valencian, what the hell are you doing wearing an armband?’” Manzanera explains. They justified wearing them by saying it was the anniversary of a former president’s death. “Nobody believed it,” says Aguirre. “The worry started in the afternoon,” Manzanera adds, at the courthouse, with the looming threat of a possible five-year and one-day prison sentence for disturbing the peace under the anti-terrorism law. They escaped punishment, but had to pay a fine of 100,000 pesetas: “It was infinitely more than we earned in a month. Just a few years earlier, my father had bought an apartment for 150,000 pesetas.” Their mail was also intercepted.

Death threats from the Guerrillas of Christ the King

A few days later, Manzanera went into the locker room and someone asked him if he'd seen the press: a newspaper was reporting that they'd been sentenced to death in a court-martial by far-right groups. The death threats from the Guerrillas of Christ the King began. Fear set in. Aguirre sent his wife and two children to the Basque Country. "We didn't open the door to anyone. For a few days, we only left the house to go to training," he emphasizes. Manzanera slept at Aguirre's house a few nights. He had a shotgun because he liked to go hunting rabbits or partridges from time to time. "Those days I slept with the shotgun behind the bedroom door," the Valencian points out. He takes a breath and continues: "Aitor told me to look under the car because sometimes, well, you know. I hadn't thought about it. I only did it once or twice. I didn't know what I was supposed to look for. Something that said 'bomb'?" he says, laughing. The situation gradually "dissipated," especially after the dictator's death. Five decades later, Manzanera maintains that this is one of the most beautiful things he has ever done: "It was a struggle, a gesture in favor of democracy and against the death penalty and the lack of freedom, against injustice. It was a gesture of rage, of wanting things to change, and for things to change in Spain." On that October 1st, Franco said in his last public appearance that in Spain and Europe there had been "a leftist Masonic conspiracy in collusion with communist-terrorist subversion, which, while it honors us, debases them."