The daughter of a victim of ETA, on the murderer of her father who concurs in the lists of Bildu: "It can not represent any citizen"

At the end of the seventies, Eva Larrañaga and Begoña Uzkudun were almost neighbors, living only 14 kilometers away. Today they are separated by a world. Eva is the daughter of José Txiki Larrañaga, whom ETA murdered on New Year's Eve 1984 in Azkoitia (Gipuzkoa). Begoña was then a member of the terrorist group and was the one who notified the command that committed the deadly attack. One was left without a father; The other spent nearly 18 years in prison for committing this and other serious crimes. Their lives are reunited four decades later. The relatives of the victim have now known that Uzkudun is presented in the list of EH Bildu to the City Council of Errezil and will end up being a councilor with all certainty. Eva rebels with pain against this reality: "Begoña can lead the life she pleases, but she can never represent any citizen," she says in a letter sent to this newspaper.

The entire Larrañaga family – the couple and their three children – took refuge in Logroño in 1980 because ETA had twice tried to kill the father, José Txiki, a councillor in Azkoitia in the last Franco era, founder of Guipúzcoa Unida and sympathizer of the UCD. The first time, in April 1978, he was shot twice in the leg. Just two years later, he was machine-gunned and seriously wounded with a shot to the chest. ETA claimed responsibility for both terrorist actions. And the third was the final one: on December 31, 1984, he returned to his village to celebrate New Year's Eve, but he did not arrive for dinner. He was in a bar with some friends and three ETA members appeared (including Kubati, Yoyes' murderer two years later) who shot him several times, causing his death on the spot. Begoña Uzkudun worked as a waitress in that bar and was the one who gave the tip that sentenced Larrañaga. After the attack, he gave them shelter in his home.

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The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, pronounces on the lists of Bildu with former ETA terrorists

The President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, from the White House.Video: EPV

Eva is going through a very painful time. Of that Larrañaga-Sudupe family, only she and her sister Maite remain. The widow, known as Rosita Bomba, passed away in 2019. Just three weeks ago the eldest son, Fernando, died. Eva admits they are "devastated." He does not want to speak on the phone to refer to the open debate on the inclusion of ETA convicts in the electoral lists of EH Bildu, but accepts that some messages sent from the mobile, previously agreed with his sister Maite, are reproduced: "My father was murdered while the family was waiting for him for dinner. They did it with the necessary collaboration of Begoña Uzkudun. She warned that José Txiki was in his town with his friends saying goodbye to the year. Begoña tipped off and hid the terrorists who killed our father. She was sentenced to prison and served her sentence as served in our prison system, little and badly. Now she is reintegrated into society, never for the relatives of the murdered because that fact is irreversible."

Begoña Uzkudun, arm raised, next to Xabier Alegría, in an act of the collective of ETA prisoners held in Usurbil in 2016. Behind her, wearing a green jersey, the exetarra Kubati. Josu Zabarte, alias 'The Butcher of Mondragon', the third from the left and wearing a cap. Javier Hernandez

The aforementioned silence is silent. "He's not going to say anything," an EH Bildu spokesman told this newspaper. It is the third of the plate of the abertzale coalition in his hometown, where he now governs with five of the seven councilors of the Consistory. In Errezil calm reigns. In this municipality of almost 600 inhabitants, where the sovereigntist left is hegemonic, silence is absolute. The neighbors do not want to pronounce. They shake with their heads or with their hands, without uttering a word. The same silence that Arnaldo Otegi answered on Thursday when journalists asked him about the controversy of the lists in a pre-election event in Vitoria. On the balcony of the Town Hall of Errezil are placed the four official flags, the Spanish included. There is only one graffiti in the whole village, and it goes against EH Bildu: "EH Bildu, servant of StatKraft", puts in Basque on one of the walls of the church against the installation of wind farms in the mountains.

Uzkudun was arrested in September 1988. He was with the ETA Mikel Kastresana when he was shot dead by the police in San Sebastian. She was the mother of a two-year-old girl. The following year she was sentenced to 18 years in prison for participating in Larrañaga's murder. In total, he accumulated sentences totaling 78 years in prison. He was released in January 2006. This is the first time Uzkudun has stood for election. "We," says Eva in her name and that of her sister Maite, "say with a loud and firm voice that we must not accept that any person convicted of blood crimes, whether terrorist or not, can stand in an election, municipal, regional, Spanish or European."

Place of the attack against José Larrañaga, 53, on Calle Mayor, a few meters from the Alameda bar where he left accompanied by some friends, in 1985. EFE

Since his release from prison, Uzkudun has only agreed to demonstrate publicly to narrate the trips he made, already completed his sentence, to the prisons of Granada and Almería, where he went to visit his sister Maritxu (22 years imprisoned for belonging to ETA) and her partner, Jon Aginagalde (also ETA, 29 years behind bars). And he has shown his face in several events organized by the collective of prisoners of the band, among others the one held in 2016 in Usurbil, which brought together several hundred activists who were imprisoned.

Has Begoña Uzkudun ever had a gesture of rapprochement with the Larrañaga family? Have you tried to ask them for forgiveness? Have you shown any kind of regret? "Never, never, never," says Eva. "My father's case is bloody," the victim testified in the past. "It is unfortunate that in a democratic country you have to leave your town, your community, leave your family, your friends, your job, everything. Then, you come to Logroño with the aftermath of the second attack, which was very serious, you start a new life, you go to Azkoitia on rare occasions ... and one New Year's Eve that you are going to spend with your family they kill you. Imagine my mother how she stayed! They had already managed to get the person who was supposedly hurting them to leave. What more did they want then?" said Eva in an interview with La Rioja in January 2012.

EH Bildu and the electoral acronyms that preceded the Abertzale left have been including numerous ETA prisoners, including gang leaders, in their lists throughout the last elections, especially before the approval of the law of parties (2002). In the 1987 regional elections, Guillermo Arbeloa, then a preventive prisoner for belonging to ETA, headed the list to the Parliament of Navarre. In those elections, Juan Carlos Yoldi, imprisoned in Nanclares (Álava), defended in the Basque Chamber his candidacy for lehendakari against José Antonio Ardanza. In the Basque elections of 1998, Josu Urrutikoetxea, Josu Ternera, achieved the parliamentary record and chaired the Human Rights Commission. Another ETA leader, José Ignacio Zabaleta Baldo, was a councillor in Hernani in 1999. The lists of this coalition were riddled with those years of condemned activists.

Now, with ETA dissolved since 2011, Otegi's party has included 44 convicted of belonging to the gang, of which seven have blood crimes, including Begoña Uzkudun. Eva Larrañaga still resides in Logroño, about 160 kilometers from Errezil. The distance that separates the two is total.

View of the village of Errezil, in Gipuzkoa.javier hernández

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