When you couldn't change the world or talk about ETA: "The word was dead"

Manuel Indiano, an electronic technician by training, was 29 years old, owned a candy shop called Kokolo and held the position of councillor in the Gipuzkoa town of Zumarraga. He was not too eager to occupy that public office: he entered the lists to meet the minimum needed by the party and was not elected; But he ended up working after the resignation of several colleagues. A twist that would seal his fate.

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Being young in the leaden years of terrorism: "I forget, but I don't forgive: you can't forgive the unforgivable"

On the morning of August 29, 2000, terrorists shot him 14 times in his own shop. ETA had been pointing him out for some time before, threatening him with graffiti: it called him "envoy from Madrid". 400 kilometres away, precisely in Madrid, Ana Useros was a young woman from the same estate, spatially but also ideologically distant from Indiano: she was not a member of the Popular Party, but of the extra-parliamentary left of the Lavapiés neighbourhood, where she frequented squatted social centres and cultural and feminist initiatives. Useros then felt a deep connection with Indiano. But he kept it to himself until now. So you couldn't.

One of the few images of Manuel Indiano that can be found, taken in a municipal plenary session on March 8, 2000 in Zumárraga.

Cuando no se poda (Lengua de Trapo y Círculo de Bellas Artes) is a book made of various wickers. One is the story of Indiano, which Useros set out to recover. Now he saw it in a different way: if at that time he was struck by aspects of his youth or of the time, such as the fact that Indiano left everything in Madrid, for no apparent reason (in reality he was moved by love), to join the military in the Basque Country, or that he decided not to have an escort, as an act of fatalism; When it came to undertaking the book, the author, now a mother and not just a daughter, looked at other aspects more in line with her life stage. For example, the fact that Indiano never told his family that he was a PP councillor in Zumárraga. Or that he left behind a seven-month pregnant partner, Encarnación Carrillo, through whose published interviews he tries to draw a profile of the victim. "Indiano's murder had repercussions at the time," says Useros, "but then his case, like that of other anonymous victims, with the exception of Miguel Ángel Blanco, became just another number in the statistics." Indiano's remembrance on the PP's victims' website barely occupies six lines.

The Context of Terrorism

In recent times, other works have appeared on the publishing scene that deal, in one way or another, with the contexts in which terrorist murders took place. For example, That Which You Called Paradise (Libros del K.O.), by Ricardo Casas Fischer and Francisco Uzcanga, where, through the assassination of the socialist Enrique Casas, they reflect on the youth who grew up in the Basque Country in the atmosphere of violence at the end of the 20th century. Or Salir de la noche (Libros del Asteroide), by Mario Calabresi, which delves into the Italian years of lead by recalling the assassination of police commissioner Luigi Calabresi by the Red Brigades.

Other pieces of Cuando no se pudo deal with the political situation in Spain at the turn of the century. That "you couldn't" in the title can be interpreted in a couple of ways. Like the feeling of impotence of that left to the left of parliament, which only knew that it could be done from the 15M movement. And such as the impossibility of communication around the Basque conflict. Useros perceived two positions that prevented any negotiation, any intermediate space: "The most extreme position, of ETA, wanted to integrate the whole of society into its delusional logic, through the socialization of suffering. Anyone could be a victim. The other was the central government, presided over by José María Aznar, which criminalized any attempt at a negotiated solution. We were in the middle of a crossfire."

Funeral for Manuel Indiano held at the Collegiate Church of San Isidro in Madrid. In the photo, from right to left, José María Aznar, Javier Arenas, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and Jaime Mayor Oreja next to the coffin. ALBERTO MARTIN (EFE)

And no one, the author observed, seemed to take into account those "pawns" on the chessboard, such as Manuel Indiano. "We lost sight of the fact that it is the people who make policy," he says, "so you build a type of politics where you end up thinking that there is only one way to do things and that it is about many people agreeing. But in this way plurality is lost. Voices are lost that say, 'That doesn't convince me.' Maybe what was needed was negotiation. But the word was dead."

The Left Looking for Escapes

"The young people who became politicized at that time did so in very extreme conditions." Useros was part of a left-wing group, which he recalls in the text with a certain satirical spirit, called the Society of Practical Philosophy. Faced with this feeling of impotence, each left-wing formation sought its "escape". For example, the anti-globalization movement, or what was then understood as the internet utopia, where a freer society would be created. It is surprising to remember that there was a time when the Net was seen that way.

In the case of the Society of Practical Philosophy, the aim was to "rethink the political project of democracy and think about how to make a fairer society with the tools in place". Unlike other, more militant left-wing movements, they prided themselves on their flexibility and ideological tolerance. They even listened, with a certain morbidity, to Federico Jiménez Losantos's program, which was not so rare, neither then nor now, among the leftist audience. But they felt that those tools of democracy were being twisted. "There was constant appeal to the rule of law, but in the face of the rule of law you almost had to square up," says Useros, "they were going to harass you."

The Puerta del Sol in Madrid, on May 20, 2011, where hundreds of people gathered in the 15M movement. Alvaro Garcia

Cuando no se podo is part of the collection of the new National Episodes initiated by the publishing house Lengua de Trapo (where authors such as Sabina Urraca, Elizabeth Duval, Jacobo Ribero, Alberto Santamaría and Begoña Méndez have already participated), which try to take up the idea of Benito Pérez Galdós but, instead of recounting the Spanish nineteenth century, doing the same with recent history. Useros, a "completist" reader of the Galdosian Episodes, makes a fine analysis, halfway through her text, of the project itself. He observes that, although in Galdós's novels the protagonist is the historical time that advances impassively, including within it the other characters, subject to its course, in the current case each novel collects its own authorial voice that generates its own small world. "There is no Galdós above the different narrators who says 'this was not exactly like that', as there was in the original Episodes," explains the author. A plurality of voices and perspectives very much in line with these kaleidoscopic times.

Useros, translator, documentary filmmaker and film programmer, is also an expert in the thought of Walter Benjamin, on whom she has published several studies. One of Benjamin's themes is history, which he said had to be tackled "against the grain." While the traditional view of history, born in the Enlightenment and beloved by the left, was steeped in the notion of progress, of the present as a preparation for a better future, its ruptures and discontinuities needed to be taken into account, giving voice to alternative narratives and the experiences of the oppressed or marginalized. Some of this has served Useros well: "Dynamiting this story of progress by paying attention to the small details," says the author. Such as, for example, many of those figures that appear in Galdós' National Episodes. Or like that of the owner of the Kokolo candy shop in Zumárraga, Manuel Indiano.

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