The day that ETA killed José Larrañaga Arenas, Txiki for his friends, was the third time they had tried to assassinate him. A councilor in the Azcoitia town hall, he was the provincial head of the Movement during the dictatorship and had joined the ranks of the Unión de Centro Democrático (UCD) with the advent of democracy. For this reason, the terrorist group had him among their targets for some years and, as soon as they could, they killed him by shooting him six times at point blank range.
Larrañaga, who at the time was working as a businessman and part-time court clerk, was 58 years old, was married and had three children, a 22-year-old boy and two 19- and 17-year-old girls.. He no longer lived in the Gipuzkoan municipality, but had had to flee to Logroño with his family to save themselves from the terrorists. But at Christmas 1984 he returned to celebrate New Year's Eve.. Larrañaga never reached the year 1985.
To perpetrate that murder, the information provided by a woman was essential: Begoña Uzkudun Etxenagusia. It is about an ETA member whose name now returns to the present day, appearing as one of the 44 people that EH Bildu has on its lists for the regional and municipal elections of 28-M in the Basque Country and in Navarra.
Begoña and the other 43 were sentenced for belonging to and collaborating with ETA. Of all those, there are seven who went to jail for their part in the gang's murders. Begoña, one of them, is number 3 in Bildu's candidacy for the Régil City Council (Guipúzcoa).
The condemned will surely be a councilor, since she is in starting positions and Bildu has ruled the town uninterruptedly since 2011. In the last elections of 2019, the formation obtained 71.23% of the votes and has five councilors of the seven that are in the City Council. The remaining two belong to a local party, Errezilgintza.
it happened before
Despite the controversy, it is not the first time it has happened. In the previous municipal elections, Bildu came to present 18 people convicted of terrorism, as recalled by Carmen Ladrón de Guevara, lawyer for the Association of Victims of Terrorism (AVT).. So, only one had blood crimes. Now, he's upped the ante.
Begoña Uzkudun was sentenced in 1989 to 18 years in prison for her tip on the murder of Larrañaga. Together with her, the National Court sentenced José Antonio López Ruiz, alias Kubati, to 30 years in prison. He got out of prison in 2006.
In December 2015, the Collective of Victims of Terrorism (Covite) sent a complaint to the National Court against 76 members or former members of the terrorist group ETA for allegedly using false documentation to reduce their years of sentence.. She was one of those 76.
Covite argued that all the defendants had submitted false records of university studies completed at the University of the Basque Country and the UNED to qualify for prison benefits.. Some of them even reduced their stay in prison by half thanks to these studies.
According to the group, the evidence found indicated that there were falsified documents, such as the use of DNI with correlative numbers, the duplication of identification numbers or dates of access exams up to ten years after beginning the studies.. In other cases, the access roads to the studios were not even listed.
Murder on New Year's Eve
Larrañaga's life was that of someone who knew they wanted to kill him. That of a person constantly stalked by terrorists. A guy who spent the last years of his existence in permanent flight. ETA tried to kill him twice. The third time he got it. The first of the attacks took place on April 13, 1978.
Begoña is on the EH Bildu lists 40 years after her participation in one of the ETA crimes.
That night, José left a bar at 10:30 p.m. on his way home.. A few minutes later, several members of a local commando shot at him from a car that they had previously managed to steal.. Three bullets hit him in the right leg.. Larranaga survived.
Two years later, on April 11, 1980, the second assassination attempt took place.. The terrorists carried out the attack following the same modus operandi. The shots hit him in the chest and seriously injured him, according to the data from that event compiled by the Foundation for Victims of Terrorism.
A month later, the gunmen tightened their siege. On May 12, 1980, ETA assassinated his friend Ramón Baglietto, also a councilor in the City Council of the same town, Azcoitia.
Shortly after, Larrañaga left the town, the town where he had always lived and where he had served as mayor, and went to Logroño under pressure from his family.. He left harassed by the terrorists, although he never stopped returning to his homeland to visit his family. It was on New Year's Eve 1984 when ETA carried out the previous attempts to assassinate him.
At the edge of 9:30 p.m. on that December 31, Txiki Larrañaga was at Bar Alameda, having a drink with her lifelong friends, celebrating the end of the year.
The chronicles of the time describe that there were not many people left on the street. Most of the neighbors had already retired to their homes, to enjoy the last dinner of 1984 as a family.. Larrañaga never managed to reach his.
As soon as he set foot outside the premises, members of the ETA Goyerri command shot him open-faced. Injured, Larrañaga collapsed on the street sidewalk after receiving four shots to the face. One of the shooters finished him off with a bullet to the head.. Immediately afterwards, the terrorists fled with a vehicle that they had stolen hours before.
One of the chronicles of the time narrating the attack.
That same night, after the crime, Román Sudupe, mayor of Azcoitia and president of the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV), went to the victim's house to express his condolences to the family, broken with grief for the murder.. The funeral took place the next day.
The PSOE at the funeral
The funeral was attended by the delegate of the Socialist Government in the Basque Country, Ramón Jáuregui, the president of the General Meetings of Guipúzcoa, Xabier Aizarna, the vice president of the Basque Parliament and leader of the PSOE, José Antonio Maturana; and the spokesman for the Popular Coalition in the autonomous Parliament, Jaime Mayor Oreja.
In October 2011, one of his daughters recalled the events in an interview in La Rioja: “We were waiting for him for dinner and they called us to tell us that they had killed him.. We believed that my father had already complied, they had thrown us out of town. What did my father mean to them?”
His daughter explained that since what happened they were left “without a guide and without light, all of them also died with him.”. “What really happened to my father is that he was a militant of the right, Spanish and a brave. It has always seemed stupid to me to forgive. Forgiving is my moral problem with God, but it has nothing to do with what we ask for, which is justice.. If I forgive or not, it will be my own, intimate problem. I know that there (in Azcoitia) they were very fond of my father, but now I realize that there was an enormous cowardice on the part of everyone,” he added.
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Nearly 40 years later, one of the people convicted of his father’s murder will be able to hold a position like the one he once held.
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