The president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Diaz Ayuso, presents the strategic lines of the Regional Pact for Housing of the Community of Madrid, this Wednesday.Sinova Díaz (COMMUNITY OF MADRID/EFE)
The president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, has signed and dismissed the retired lieutenant general of the Civil Guard Arturo Espejo Valero in a few hours this Wednesday, after learning from EL PAÍS that the career of the high command of the armed institute has been punctuated by the so-called
Mikel Zabalza case
.
It all happened on November 26, 1985. Zabalza was arrested on suspicion of collaborating with ETA, and his lifeless body appeared floating in the waters of the Bidasoa River on December 15 of that same year.
The official version is that he escaped and drowned.
Espejo Valero, one of the civil guards involved in his arrest, has never been investigated for these events, as explained by the current Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, when he defended his latest promotion and provoked the protest of the majority of the Basque parties. .
This past, supposedly unknown to the Executive, has led to his appointment as CEO of the regional cybersecurity agency being voided just a few hours after being decided by the government council this Wednesday.
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This is how a government spokesperson explained the signing to this newspaper: “Until now I was responsible for Cybersecurity issues in the Civil Guard.
And these years he has risen to number three in the organization chart of the Civil Guard.”
However, minutes later, the Díaz Ayuso Government has rectified his decision: “We did not know his resume.
The appointment is void, because it will not be published in the official bulletin [on Thursday].
He will be named later to another person.”
Before rectifying its decision, the Community of Madrid had justified the signing with the same arguments that the central government assumed in 2023 to promote Espejo Valero, despite the scandal it generated among the Basque left, including the PSE itself.
“He has never been charged,” Grande-Marlaska recalled in April 2023 on behalf of the Government, where the promotion of Espejo Valero then caused tensions with the Minister of Defense, Margarita Robles, according to political sources.
“There is no contradictory element for his promotions because in the rule of law the presumption of innocence is imposed,” added the minister, very harsh with the insinuations made by the Basque nationalists, and never proven, that Zabalza had been tortured in the barracks. from Intxaurrondo.
“There is talk of serious events without a minimum of reasonable evidence.”
When this promotion became known, Unidas Podemos, the PNV and EH Bildu presented questions and requests to appear in Congress.
Even the general secretary of the Basque socialists, Eneko Andueza, conveyed to Zabalza's family his “indignation and shame” at the lieutenant general's promotion.
And the Basque Government even officially expressed its “great discomfort” with that decision.
“It is important so that we can make peace with our memory that everything that can be clarified is clarified,” said the spokesperson for the Executive of Vitoria, Bingen Zupiria.
“Mikel Zabalza was probably a victim of police torture and illegitimate and unjust violence by the State security forces, but there is no certainty about that either, no one has been able to prove it,” he added, urging a judicial investigation into the matter. occurred.
Zabalza, according to the version of the Civil Guard, was arrested on November 26, 1985 at his home for his alleged collaboration with ETA and was later transferred to Endarlaza (Navarra) to locate a hiding
place
.
When he was in a tunnel accompanied by three civil guards, among whom was the then lieutenant Arturo Espejo, he fled in handcuffs.
Twenty days after his disappearance, Zabalza's body was found in the waters of the Bidasoa.
The autopsy carried out in Pamplona revealed that the cause of death had been “asphyxiation due to immersion between fifteen to twenty days before being found.”
The closing of the case, decided in 1988, highlighted that the judicial investigation had been “extensive and thorough”, until it was exhausted, and that the file of the case would allow the investigation to be reopened “if in the future there were sufficient merits for it, by virtue of "new facts of which at this time there is no evidence or evidence."
Likewise, the court confirmed point by point the arguments and evidence presented by the investigating judge and noted that the court had reached the unequivocal conclusion that the entire investigation “supports the explanation of Mikel Zabalza's escape through the hole in the tunnel. “Endarlaza.”
He also stressed that, according to the autopsy, the deceased died from immersion in the river.
This decision was considered by Íñigo Iruin, the prosecution's lawyer, “a defeat of justice in the face of autonomous police spaces” and a reflection of police impotence to resolve these cases.
Almost 40 years later, the embers of the case have lit a new fire: Espejo Valero has only lasted a few hours as CEO of the cybersecurity agency of the Community of Madrid.
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