Vitoria (EFE) They left “shattered lives” and “dynamited” lives, which they have managed to rebuild over the years and distance. Now they demand that the memory of what happened continue to live.
The memories of three of these victims have been heard at the ceremony organized by the Basque Government in Vitoria to hand out 52 new Memory and Acknowledgment Notebooks of attacks that have not been fully clarified.
These are dossiers that collect who they were, how they lived and how they died. Also graphic material provided by the relatives with the help of the Association of Victims of Terrorism (AVT).
Adeli Becerra, sister of Joaquín Becerra, a member of the UGT and a Tubes del Nervión worker murdered in Amurrio (Álava) in 1980, explained that there are no words to communicate what the murder of her brother, who was shot 7 times, meant. He was accompanied by his mother.
never get over
“It destroys everything, it destroys everything. We are taking it, but it is never overcome ”, Adeli pointed out. She has defended the need for the youngest to know what happened, but from skepticism. She thinks that “they will never believe how it was and the suffering that was suffered.”
José Ignacio Ustarán was 13 years old and was studying in his room when three terrorists knocked on the door. They pointed a gun at him and took his father, an industrial expert and UCD militant, also in 1980.
He remembers his mother’s “heartbreaking scream” when the murder was confirmed and how after “that dramatic night a different life began.” The terrorists “dynamit a family that is blown up”.
He has pointed out that the move to Seville and time has been helping him to face it. He has warned that it is “fundamental” that society does not forget what happened, “that it understands what happened” and that “memory remains alive” by taking these experiences to schools.
For her part, Ruth Doval has no memories of her own when ETA killed her father, Juan de Dios Noval, a university professor and member of the UCD, when she was 4 years old. “ETA robbed me of knowing my father,” says Ruth.
His family also left the Basque Country, where in the 1980s and well into the 21st century he recognized that the environment was very difficult. The victims who felt “abandonment and criminalization for years.”
Ruth assumes that there has been a big change in recent years. However, she insists on the need for a forceful and clear condemnation from the nationalist left.
lives cut short
Relatives of another 8 of the 52 victims who are remembered by these Memory Notebooks have listened to their testimonies at the Palacio de Villasuso in the capital of Álava during this act.
The Minister of Equality, Justice and Social Policies, Nerea Melgosa, closed it with a memory of the “lives cut short by the unreasonableness of ETA terrorism” and a desire to achieve “a future with memory and a memory with truth”.
“There was no reason, neither political nor non-political cause that justifies his murder. There was not, there is not and there will not be ”, the counselor insisted. In addition, she has repeatedly asked for forgiveness because society and institutions “did not know how to always be close and accompany the victims when they most needed it.”
He has insisted that the Basque Government wants to “contribute to the truth” by accompanying people who have suffered terrorism and violence, any type of terrorism. “All the murders have been, are and will be unjust,” she has said.
“All the mothers, wives, daughters and sisters of victims of terrorism have wondered why. They have cried, they have suffered and suffer the same pain. All of them aspire to the same future without violence and in peace. “, Has considered her.
The first delivery of these notebooks was carried out in 2021 to 86 victims of ETA terrorism. Prepared by the Human Rights Directorate of the regional Executive, they also contain a reflection of the lehendakari, Iñigo Urkullu, through which he stresses that “maintaining his memory helps prevent something similar from happening again”. EFE