Since his arrest last Monday as the alleged organizer of the attack against one of the founders of Vox, Alejo Vidal-Quadras, the biography that circulates of Naraya G. catalogs him as the son of an Israeli with whom he grew up in a hippy commune in the Alpujarra of Granada. Not everything is like that, according to those who have lived with him. Naraya, in fact, grew up in Beneficia, a commune located in a huge ravine, just 10 minutes from Órgiva (Granada, 5,791 inhabitants). However, his father is not the Jew he has been assigned these days. Those who have lived in the commune for years refer to Naraya's father as "the Syrian" because of his nationality. This man, who does not want to be seen, or talked, or of course photographed, continues to live in the commune and, according to some of the residents of the place, Naraya G. continued to visit him until recently.
The man now in prison has always remained linked to the place where he grew up. In fact, the places to which they are linked are very close: Órgiva, just five minutes away, and Lanjarón, just over a quarter of an hour away. EL PAÍS visited Beneficio days after the arrest, although it has been impossible to locate the father of the accused. Those who know him, however, place him in the commune and say that Naraya G. himself has been there recently. In Beneficia, however, everyone is doing their own thing. Some know what happened, others don't, and others pretend they don't. Some even dare theories that end up in the Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service, in which, moreover, the alleged Israeli father is to blame for everything. The truth is that the most plausible theory for the aggressor himself is that it is Iran that is behind the assassination attempt.
The spokesperson for Beneficia, at least the person everyone refers to as the journalist who can best talk to the press, and one of the founders of the commune is Edgar Thompson, a Peruvian who came to Granada in the late 1980s from the United States and bought part of the current land where it is located. On the last Saturday of November, when this newspaper visits the commune, Edgar, as he is known to all, is in Germany, according to those who seem to know his comings and goings. Because in Beneficia, in reality, no one has to give explanations and often, they don't want to give them either.
This is the case of a couple of residents who, they tell this newspaper, prefer not to answer any questions. In Beneficia, you can also enter or leave whenever you want. Mateo, a man from Jaén who came to the commune for a weekend and has been extended to 14 years old, is one of the residents who lends himself to talking. "I've only recently seen him around here." Mateo has known him since he was a child, he says, pointing to his waist, as if he had met him when he was 8 or 10 years old. Today, he says, he'll be in his early 20s. There are doubts as to whether even Naraya could have been born in the commune itself. "Years ago, more than 10 years ago, we did have a midwife here and some babies were born here because of the urgency," says a man with a Brazilian accent who has a beer with Mateo and other residents. Naraya was raised by his father, they say, but it is true that he had a close relationship with a certain "Avi Tor", as he is called, a Jew who did raise his brother and who now, far from the environment, does not have a good reputation in the commune.
One of the posters of the commune. Javier Arroyo
Simone is another resident of Beneficia, an Italian who arrived there eight years ago. Simone lives there with frequent comings and goings, she says. He is a firm believer in the founding principles of Beneficia. "Here we try to create a crystal land, it's a permanent gathering of the rainbow – translation of its permanent rainbow gathering – in which we want to live with nature, share, meditate and not resort to money," he sums up. Simone came to Beneficio through a friend, like everyone else, and settled in what he calls the Italian plateau, an elevated area with respect to where he speaks to this newspaper today, and where Italians used to meet, he says.
The commune is now home to between 100 and 300 people, according to residents' own counts. Visually, it is a huge eucalyptus forest, probably more than 20 meters high, with a stream that provides them with water and runs through the commune from top to bottom and a little too shady for the winter. Beneficio is reached from the road that connects Órgiva with the town of Cáñar, where Naraya is considered to have been born even though he was not really born there, but was registered because his father lived in the part of Beneficio – which also occupies the municipality of Órgiva – which corresponds to that town of just over 300 inhabitants. From that road there is a dirt road with huge potholes that you have to travel slowly. It is barely 500 or 600 meters that leave the visitor in a parking area. From there, the commune begins. It all started with a few acres bought by Thompson and other founders. Today, Beneficio surpasses that terrain and it is difficult to give the exact figure of space occupied. Everyone arrives and settles where they don't bother, says Mateo. At the entrance to the ravine, he is with a few friends chatting. There's a Swede, a man from Madrid, he, who is from Jaén, another man with a Brazilian accent and a couple of them who don't speak.
From the entrance, an ascending path of more than a kilometer runs through Beneficia in half. In the first few meters, you can see that the last tents have arrived, tents that, as you advance, turn into more or less large self-constructions, teepee (the tent of the Sioux Indians) or yurts (the tent used by the nomads of Mongolia). A few orchards and a large children's play area occupy the central space, where Edgard Thompson's residence is located, undoubtedly the most stable and luxurious. Solar panels here and there, plus running water from a stream that crosses the commune, complete the infrastructure. Many houses are made invisible by the undergrowth and the unevenness of the terrain.
Naraya G., the son of a Syrian hippy, now a radicalized Shiite according to police information and who, allegedly, is the organizer, not the ideologue, of the assassination attempt on Vidal-Quadras on the 9th, grew up in that ravine of the Alpujarra. And in the triangle between that commune, Órgiva and Lanjarón, he has moved all his life until his recent admission to prison. The police are investigating who pushed him to set the machinery of the attack in motion. In Beneficia, they insist that he has always lived according to the entire philosophy of the commune. At some point, however, he seems to have forgotten the peace and love he had learned, but it is still not known when or why.
Subscribe to continue reading
Read without limits
Read more
I'm already a subscriber
_