6. Vitoria: The Turning Point
Many years have passed since that fateful day on 3 March 1976, but the memories are as fresh in my mind as if it was yesterday. More than four decades later, in January 2018, I returned to Vitoria, where I interviewed a group of activists who participated in these events. Among them was Imanol Olabarría – the former worker priest whose early memories we have already mentioned – who was one of the leaders of the movement of 3 March. Also present was Andoni Txasco, the president of the Asociación de Víctimas 3 de Marzo (Association for the Victims of 3 March), who lost his sight as a result of a vicious beating he received at the hands of the police.
I also interviewed Santiago Díaz de Espada, who was a student on 3 March. He now works full time for the Basque radical trade union, LAB (Langile Abertzaleen Batzordeak). The interviews took place, with some other activists, in the offices of the Association for the Victims of 3 March in the centre of Vitoria, which in the Basque language is called Gasteiz. I have used both names here, as, in my experience, it is common practice among its citizens.
Many things have been written about that day, and I do not pretend to add anything strikingly new. But I have decided to dedicate most of this chapter to the verbatim accounts that I recorded. I am conscious that this does not necessarily make for great literature, but at least it is the authentic voice of people who made history. They deserve to be heard.
As I was also present in Vitoria at the time, I have added my own voice to theirs, as an eyewitness of an important day in the history of the working-class movement.
Activists Remember
I started by asking Imanol about his early experiences of the underground Basque workers’ movement:
We had already started to hold some clandestine meetings, and after Franco’s death you could see that the tree was falling, and people were becoming more and more restless, willing to participate and so on. We had clandestine meetings in the countryside in Zadorra, next to the river, or even behind the new cemetery on the outskirts of Vitoria, in some bar or other where the owner was sympathetic…
It was a real hotbed of political activity. And there we were so many people with different sets of initials! There was the PT, ORT, OIC, and in the League (LKI) there were different tendencies. Even in the Workers’ Commissions there were also different tendencies (one tendency followed the PCE line, another was with the MC)…
I remember when I was campaigning, trying to get an idea of how people felt, someone from some firm or other, I do not remember who it was, produced a list of thirteen demands as the starting point for agitation, and I was surprised because those thirteen points seemed to me to be the most fantastic thing – I mean, it was very advanced.
And I said to myself, well, we Cablenor workers are not going to be any less advanced! Other people gave their opinion until it was the turn of someone from my factory with whom I was in contact. When he read the thirteen points he said, “Watch out! They’re Trotskyists!” What they had read out was the Transitional Programme. They were not the workers’ demands. They had not bothered to find out what people were thinking or what they really wanted. No, it was the Transitional Programme!
How it All Began
Imanol continued:
It all started in Forjas [the big steel factory in Vitoria], and then there were two other big companies who were the first to move. I got together with the man who read the Transitional Programme in my factory and formed a circle of grassroots people there. In fact, we formed it outside, during holidays, and we got together about thirteen.
I had never managed to gather so many people, though I used to go drinking with some of them. I did not use to drink, but as it was so important for me, I went out drinking with them and ended up drunk. It was something worth celebrating. My in-laws and my parents had come for dinner, and they gave me a cup of coffee and put me to bed.
Then we decided that we had to take action. We divided up the tasks between us and said we’ll get on the factory bus and at the stop before the factory we will shout: “stop the bus!” (at that time, we are half asleep). “Stop the bus, wake up, get off, and go to the basement and put on your overalls.” Then we said: “Well, you know that Forjas and other companies are on strike”. That was 9 or 10 December. Two days later, we said: “It’s true that our collective agreement comes later, but the causes for which they are fighting are the same as ours, so we should do something, taking advantage of the fact that they are on strike to stop work.”
I do not know if the words we said on the bus convinced them, but we were in a state of tremendous tension when we went down to see what people were doing. We had told them to put on their overalls, but instead of going to their machines, to go to a new part of the factory that was still empty. When we saw that people really were going to the new section, we felt a tremendous sense of relief.
There we all got together and said “now the head of personnel is coming.” He really had us all scared stiff. He was the man you went to see when he called you because of some fault or other, sometimes to read you the riot act, or if you had to ask for permission to take a day off work. He was the chief representative of management who maintained contact with the shop floor.
We said: “We are not going to enter into discussions with him at all, absolutely nothing. Nobody must utter even a word.” Soon after, in comes the head of personnel: “What’s going on? At this time, you should be … this is illegal,” and so on, and so forth. “Return to your workplace!” People looked at each other as if they were studying one another’s reaction so that no one would lose his temper, or start to work on the machines.
After three failed attempts, the head of personnel, who was accompanied by other people from the office, just left. For us it was more breathing space. So, what now? I think there were young people at that time (I was not so young – I was thirty-nine years old) but there were younger people who had only recently entered the workforce after finishing their military service. But there were other people who were older and less physically fit, who were no longer able to work, other than cleaning the toilets, sweeping the factory floor and so on. These people were about to retire. How would they react?
These were the kind of assumptions that passed through my mind at that moment. But then suddenly you discover that those people in the factory who nobody asked about anything, people who had never been taken into consideration, suddenly felt they were appreciated. They suddenly discovered that, once we were united, we could stand up to a man who had terrified them. “Christ! Just think what we could do!” A new-found sense of self-esteem was born. “Hooray! We can do it.” And then we started talking about our complaints and our dreams, about how lousy our life was. And I think that was a decisive moment, when people did see what we could do, just by lifting our little finger.
Anyway, three or four days passed. The company opened the factory doors every morning and there was always some statement. Eventually, the company said that it wanted to negotiate, but they did not know who the members of the Vertical Union were, for the simple reason that the people who had participated had improvised and decided to act spontaneously. There were no elections among us at that time. Well, we went along anyway.
“– What do you want?”
“– You can read our list of demands.”
“– OK, we will negotiate. Come back tomorrow, you come and …”
What he wanted was for us to take on the role of the Vertical Trade Union delegates, that is, for us, at a personal and individual level, to sign on behalf of the rest of the people. But that was not what they were doing at Forjas, which was our point of reference. Sometimes it was a valid reference without further ado, but the reference was always worthy of applause because it opened our eyes.
Lock-out
By the fourth day we had achieved nothing, and the factory owners locked us out. Forjas workers had occupied a church, so we were looking for another church to do the same. There was a mutual interaction between us. We went to Judimendia, at the other end of town the same day. We did not negotiate with anybody, but simply occupied the church. The priests protested, saying that it was not good form, that it was a private place, and so on. We answered that, since we do not have a private place to meet ourselves, we are not going to leave.
As there were quite a few of us, and not many of them, and moreover the workers from the Apellarí furniture factory were also holding an assembly in the church, that settled the matter. In the end, since the meetings there were open, the priests were listening to what we were saying. That disarmed them, so they made no further opposition, nor did they try to close the doors.
They began by tolerating us, and in the end, I think they even looked with a certain sympathy on what we were doing. And the neighbours, who found out what was going on, also approached us to see what we were doing and that, I think, was very important for us, to counter the press campaign. They were able to compare what they heard or saw on the radio, television or whatever, with what they found out at first hand.
We left the factories and went to the churches; then came the second stage, when we started to go out onto the streets to demonstrate. First, there were a few demonstrations, and then people said: why not? To make an impact on the people and for people to observe how many were on strike, each one went out onto the street dressed in overalls from his or her factory. And, of course, with overalls of so many colours, it was very striking. Here and there people were commenting: “these are the ones that are on strike”.
An important element was the wage rise, because the rise of 5 or 6,000 pesetas was the same for everyone. Between us there was a differential of four per cent when you entered, up to grade fourteen, which were the maintenance managers and that was the maximum to which you could aspire. It promoted divisions among us. But this rise was not a percentage increase, because that increased the differences still more, but the same average for all. So somehow, we were lessening the differences.
At the beginning, it is a little assembly, when I speak of assembly, for example, at first it was not an assembly, it was an improvisation to stop production, which was the only language that the employer understands. Production time is the goose that lays the golden egg. If you stop that, for the employer, it is not gold, but a pure loss. We can be negotiating, while still working, and the boss couldn’t care a damn. You are producing and he is winning. But if we stop working, that is it! And so it was. And the bosses were very pissed off about that.
Vertical Union Versus Representative Committees
In contrast to many cases where the strike movement was under the control of the PCE, who were striving for a deal with the regime at all costs, the strike movement here was genuinely under the control of the workers themselves. This is what gave it an extremely militant and determined character. Since the PCE was very weak in Vitoria, the Stalinists did not control this movement and were secretly alarmed by it.
Imanol added that:
The problem was that the agreements negotiated by the Sindicato Vertical were separated by branches of industry. The metalworkers, the automobile sector, chemicals were all negotiated at different times. This was done so that the workers did not coincide; it was meant to isolate one group of workers from another, so that there could be no ‘contagion’. Therefore, we had to look for excuses to act.
In those days there was no system of going through elected comrades, so you found out the same day that they had reached an agreement and there it was, signed, sealed and delivered, because it was up on the notice board saying: “Such and such increase,” and that was it. There was no way you could participate in those shenanigans. The only union was the Sindicato Vertical. You had to negotiate through the jurados.
On the eve of the strike, I approached one of the workers, Cuevas, in the Vertical Trade Union of the factory wanting to know something because there was a deafening silence. I said: “Hey Cuevas, how’s the agreement going?” And he answered with a few meaningless words, that basically everything was going fine. That is, he just wanted to cover his backside. He said “well, you know there are so many of us. You can’t satisfy everyone, so let’s try to do what’s best for all concerned.” What are you supposed to say to that?
I then asked him what attitude the PCE had to the strike:
We must go back a bit in time. In the 1960s, they were calling for a general strike. That won them a lot of prestige among the people. They also gained authority at the time of the trial of the Workers Commissions’ leaders, who were sentenced to long terms of imprisonment. But by Christmas 1975, the PCE was already for pacification and negotiation as a means of gaining power and of demonstrating to the regime that it was the only force that could control the workers’ movement and restore order and tranquillity. Those condemned in the trial of the 1,001 were all released to prepare the ground for social peace.
The PCE, in reality, did not want the strike. In a few factories, up until halfway through the strike, in early February, they were flirting with the jurados of the Vertical Union. Later, when they saw they were getting nowhere, they forgot about the Vertical Union.
I remember a meeting we had with three people, as a result of a phone call from Mikel Camio of CCOO. The meeting was held in a bar… We did not know who Mikel Camio was, but it turned out he was working secretly as the secretary of the Vertical Union. He told us to our face: “All this has got to be stopped. It is impossible…” Of course, they did not openly oppose the strike, but behind our backs, they were manoeuvring.
They kept quiet about all this because it was not openly raised in the assembly. In the mass meetings we used to debate all our differences, but when the time came to elect the representative commission, recallable at all times, the assembly was the supreme power. They were people who were members of political parties, but as such, they had no representation in the factories.
They were pressing for a Party member to be put on as the representative of the factory. We said, no; in your Party headquarters, you can elect your delegates for whatever you please, but in this factory, the ones who decide are the workers on strike and not people merely for being members of the PCE.
Andoni Txasco added:
In the PCE during those years they used to say that it was necessary to be in the Vertical Union and they were, and there were other currents there as well. Even some people from the Basque abertxale Left were participating in the Vertical Union. Then there are other people who say that we must have nothing to do with the Vertical Union. We have to start from the assembly, from the representatives elected in the assembly, elected and recallable at any time.
The Assemblies
During January and February, the workers held weekly assemblies at the Church of San Francisco de Asís in the city and there were regular clashes with the police on the streets afterwards. Daily assemblies were held in every factory to evaluate the progress of the struggle. The strike spread across the major factories of Vitoria.
To prevent the struggles becoming isolated from the rest of the population, assemblies were organised in the workers’ neighbourhoods and in the educational institutions, and committees of solidarity with the struggle were set up, which were also integrated into the Central Strike Committee of Vitoria.
I asked Imanol about the assemblies:
At the beginning, if you had to talk to someone it was with the people who had begun to speak up, when the immense majority of the factory was silent. Then you could see that other people were also thinking about these things and that is how we decided that we had to appoint a representative assembly, elected by the people of the different sections of the factory.
Many times, there are people who are worth a lot, but at the time of expressing themselves, pull back because they lack self-confidence. For that reason, when the workers have to present the demands, often those people are chosen. But already there had been some contacts with the other factories, and the relations were growing closer. Then it was made clear that those elected people would not have the same powers as those possessed by the jurados of the Vertical Union, who would sign, in a personal capacity, anything they liked. No, they were the spokespersons of the workers and, on the other hand, they are recallable at all times.
If they stepped out of line, we did not have to wait two months or four years for the elections, but the very next day they would be told: “No, that’s not right. We never agreed to this.” That’s what the assemblies were like. The assemblies played an important role in keeping people informed of developments. When we met every day, the first thing we did was to provide a bit of information from everyone, because in practically every house, someone worked in Forjas, another in Mercedes, and so on.
From all these sources, we all picked up a little about what is happening in Mercedes. What a problem that was! Monday was the most dangerous day, because that was when the employers had designed a trap to invite people back to work. Over the weekend, the workers would receive individual letters, saying that the factory gates were open for anyone who wanted to work. Those who wanted to work could come, and those who did not come would exclude themselves.
They tried other tricks like putting on buses, because the buses had stopped working in the end, but the striking workers were called up to be told there was going to be bus service to the factories. But by then we had already established what everyone had to do. I do not remember very well how we arrived at that conclusion. But I know that at that moment, when we went out into the street, we knew that “the streets belonged to Fraga”.
Demonstrations
There was no possibility like now to hold a legal demonstration. Now I really did not know if we asked permission, or whether they would give it if we did, or what we should do. It was a bit confusing for me. But at that moment, there was nowhere to go. Ask for a demonstration…? That was unthinkable. There was no right of assembly, demonstrations, nothing! So, we were taking a big chance.
Then the arrests and sackings began. Hell! What do we do now? In assemblies of 5 or 6,000 people, everyone was thinking hard, not waiting for their boss to say what was to be done, but each one of us straining to find a solution, to see what we could do. There are always people who draw attention to themselves, but they are not the equal of the general assembly… I believe that the participation of so many people gathered there for so many days, created something of immense value.
The first thing was to compare the information we had from the other factories. In a way, it was a bit like blowing off steam: “What are they going to do today in Forjas, what about Mevosa…?” And we ourselves had to keep an eye on the factory itself. We did not want anyone to go to work. So, we were forced to resort to the assembly for many reasons. That was the place we could debate all our problems… Debate! First point! Second point! Everything was decided all together.
If we agreed, we came to a conclusion or we waited to see what the other factories had decided. But in the end, we always reached a conclusion. If no decision was reached, it would be held over until the assembly the next day. What was the most important thing for me? About those purely economic demands – well, they were not purely economic either. Suddenly, people started saying: “As long as there are people sacked, we will not negotiate.”
My god! What a leap! It breaks certain schemes: the division of parties and unions, where the worker negotiates his wage increases and all the rest is in the hands of the political parties. We broke that scheme too. We said: “We have people who have been sacked and arrested. We will not negotiate.” And on the other hand, different factories had started to make joint decisions, so we said “we must support each other.”
Since the bosses believed that the Vertical Union’s system of delegates had served their interests well, they said to us: “Well, come back tomorrow and we will get together here as long as it takes, but we end up signing.” “No, no, we cannot do that.” The rest of the factories were quiet, waiting to see what would happen. The Trotskyist and I discovered that other factories had all received the same kind of invitations to sign an agreement, on condition that we return to the factory, and await improvements. But in the mass meetings there was disagreement about this.
Solidarity: The Role of Women
The strike movement was run on extremely democratic lines. The most important innovation was the election of Representative Committees in each factory. These organs of struggle were composed of the most militant workers, many of them with revolutionary ideas, who provided exemplary leadership from start to finish. The Representative Committees were responsible for co-ordinating the struggles and negotiating with the bosses. They were responsible to the assemblies and could be recalled by them at any time. In turn, the delegates to the assemblies were recallable at any moment.
The strike spread rapidly until it embraced all the major factories of Vitoria and the stoppage was absolute. Daily assemblies were held in every factory to evaluate the progress of the struggle. A Central Strike Committee was formed covering the whole of Vitoria. This was composed of workers’ representatives from every factory engaged in the struggle. The strike committee issued a daily newsletter with which to update the entire working class and the population at large as to the progress of the struggle. Resistance funds were established to cover the expenses of the mobilisation as well as to assist comrades in economic difficulty.
Even those not directly involved with the strike gave support. From students, to the local clergy, to farm workers – the whole community was involved. Shops gave credit and loans to the strikers, and students organised demonstrations. Students in vocational schools or technical institutes like Jesús Obrador joined in the marches because they had parents, brothers, on strike. The apprentices, some of them were in firms in conflict, participated.
Andoni, who was then a seventeen-year-old student, explains how it happened:
We saw that the movement was important, because we were marching together with our brothers and our parents. On Sunday mornings we went to see the football matches here in the neighbourhood, but after the football game, we used to march with our parents, our brothers, our friends. Even when it was pouring down, we would turn up.
At first, they left us alone. The regime did not pay much attention. They were peaceful, disciplined marches. But then they began to say “you cannot act in groups: four by four, you here and you there.” That was intended to divide us. And then came the repression, and you could not go four at a time, or even three at a time. The police were trying to put an end to the workers’ movement. That is how we saw that the system defended itself with barbarous methods from start to finish. And we saw that the whole system was in favour of the employers and in favour of capital.
Throughout the struggle, the women played an outstanding role. The women were particularly strong in their support for the workers. They organised a strike fund, food collections from local villages and held regular ‘empty shopping bag’ marches around the city square in support of the workers.
Imanol also recalls the role of the women:
The women were particularly active as collaborators, as organisers, as distributors, and they were the heart and soul of that solidarity campaign. I remember my girlfriend and her mother, my wife and mother-in-law at this time, who were participating, raising funds for food, collection and distribution.
Andoni Txasco added:
A very important factor, apart from the solidarity donations that were collected from the people who were not on strike, was that the bosses and the authorities wanted to undermine it with sackings and arrests. That meant that the platform of the Representative Commissions no longer centred on the socio-labour demands, but that there be no arrests, that the prisoners must be freed, and those dismissed must be taken back. So that is also a factor that brought together all the people, not only those who were on strike, but also got more support from all sectors of the city.
They were fighting not only for labour and economic demands, but for major social and political demands. The demands were linked up totally with the needs of the people, of the working class, of the humble people and as soon as they start to move, these people, that collective, which is the majority of society, comes up against the regime, and that occurs as soon as it starts. And the regime, which is already tottering, comes up against the working class in movement.
Mila Sanmartín, who was active at the time in the UGT and was involved in the solidarity fundraising, added:
Yes, many women were active, especially in fundraising, including middle class people in Vitoria – professional people, architects, doctors, people who held positions, who could not risk going on strike, but gave a lot of money. They did not want to appear as donors, but they gave a lot of money.
Imanol also told me:
I remember a woman who I believe did not work in any factory, who spoke in a San Francisco assembly, trying to encourage us not to cave in in our resolve, and to keep fighting. And she ended up saying something that is good to remember now: “It is better to eat a humble soup in good company, than a fine dinner in secret”. The main thing is to participate, to partake in common, without anyone being left out … And I believe that the soup kitchens and resistance funds helped those who were worse off among us.
Call to Action
Following fifty-four days of uninterrupted strike action, a call went out for a general strike. On 3 March, a complete work stoppage was called. It was observed by the entirety of the working class of Vitoria. Andoni recalls:
Previously there had been two other general strikes, on 16 and 23 February, and there were attempts to call a general strike for three weeks in a row. In those general strikes everyone had participated: the student community, workers from all the factories, with more or less of a following.
Of course, in some respects they could have been better. It was felt that they could have had a bigger impact. So, a scheme was worked out whereby, in the morning, each factory would march to its assembly in the churches of the different neighbourhoods and columns were formed from the different working-class neighbourhoods and industrial estates, heading towards the centre of the city.
That was in the morning. In the afternoon the plan was to hold a general assembly in the church of San Francisco in the neighbourhood of Zaramaga, and after the assembly to go out in a demonstration to the political centre of the city.
In the afternoon, after the five o’clock assembly, we would go into town where the police usually intervened to prevent us from reaching the political and commercial centre, and blocking it. But on 3 March, it soon became clear that the repression was much greater than in the two previous strikes. The monitoring of the workers was far greater and since the morning the repression had been stepped up.
An Eventful Journey
At the time, I was participating actively in the building of the Marxist Tendency. Our strongest basis was Vitoria, where we had won over the leaders of the Young Socialists and some leading activists in the UGT. We were receiving regular reports of the progress of the strike and we decided to go there. The comrades of the UGT in Vitoria were lacking even the most elementary things needed for the struggle. They did not even possess a small duplicator to produce leaflets.
The comrades in Madrid put pressure on the UGT bureaucracy, who finally gave in and agreed to provide a duplicator for the UGT in Vitoria. However, the bureaucracy was as slow and inefficient as ever and kept us waiting a long time before handing over the promised machine. As a result, we left Madrid much later than anticipated. In underground conditions, lateness can be fatal. And in this case, it nearly was so.
I travelled to Vitoria on the evening of 1 March in a car full of young socialists who were active in the underground. The driver was Luis Osorio, who was the one who made contact with the UGT of Álava. The car in which we were travelling was very full. I was sitting at the back with two other comrades. In the front passenger seat sat a young comrade from Navarre, whose party name was Manu. He is better known now by his real name, Alberto Arregui, an outstanding revolutionary fighter who later became a leading member of Izquierda Unida (United Left), and who tragically passed away as I was writing the last chapters this book.
The illegal duplicator was placed on the floor of the passenger’s seat. It was covered by a blanket. I did not know that Manu had lost his left leg in an accident as a child. I only found out when I saw him place his artificial leg on top of the blanket. This allowed him to travel in greater comfort. It also saved us from some very disagreeable consequences. Because of our delay, we arrived in Vitoria at a very late hour. This was dangerous, because the whole city had been turned into an armed camp. There were armed police everywhere, on the lookout for troublemakers.
As we drove into Vitoria at about 1 o’clock in the morning, we were stopped by the police at a petrol station. The cop, who was armed with a machine gun, approached the car suspiciously and looked inside. Things were looking distinctly unpromising. To be caught with a leaflet was bad enough, but to be caught with a machine capable of producing thousands of leaflets in the middle of a general strike was a serious business.
“Where have you come from?” the policeman asked in a curt tone. “From Madrid”, Luis replied, as nonchalantly as he was able. There followed an agonising moment, which seemed like an eternity, as the cop peered suspiciously into the car. Suddenly the eye of our inquisitor became fixed on Manu’s artificial leg. This evidently convinced him that our intentions were entirely innocent. “Drive on!” He snapped, taking one step back. At that moment, had we been religiously inclined, we would have offered fervent prayers to the Virgin Mary.
“A small-scale Soviet”
The next day I awoke to find myself in what was, in effect, an occupied city. At the urgent request of local bosses, armed police had been drafted in from other provinces to intimidate and oppress the workers. Minister of the Presidency and Second Deputy Minister, Alfonso Osorio, admitted: “We have already been informed by businessmen, that a small-scale soviet is being created there, and that we must act harshly”. It was like an occupied city. It was an unforgettable experience.
The local “businessmen” were not wrong in their description of a “small-scale soviet”. The packed assembly could have been a meeting of a local soviet in the early months of 1917. I was particularly impressed by the strict discipline and the orderly nature of the proceedings. The character of the people in general was quite unlike what I was accustomed to in the quieter, more reserved character of the people in Britain. Assemblies in Spain were often quite noisy and boisterous affairs, in which everyone demands to be heard and discipline can very quickly evaporate. Even in small gatherings, it was common to find everybody speaking at the same time. But this was different.
Although there were a very large number present (the church could hold several thousands and was full to capacity) and the great majority had no experience of organised debates, the meeting took place in absolute silence. You could literally have heard a pin drop as people strained to listen to what was being said. The mood was electric.
I cannot now remember the content of the speeches from the platform, but I remember being struck by the very advanced level of revolutionary consciousness. Of course, these were the most advanced elements, and some at least, had one way or another passed through the school of Marxism. But the speeches from the floor, spoken by ordinary working-class men and women, were every bit as impressive.
I cursed myself that I had not come prepared with a notebook. I managed to find a small bit of paper (an envelope, I think) on which I scribbled some notes. I still have that piece of paper, so crumpled that it is hard to read some words. It was so small that I had to write minuscule letters. These notes, hastily jotted down, are all that is left to me of that remarkable gathering. Fragmentary as they are, they still convey something of the fighting spirit of the ordinary working-class people who had at last found their voice and were determined to make it heard:
“This is a fight between class enemies: a war in which some go to the front and fall wounded. Others step forward and ask to be the relief force. Others go home and say ‘we are with you’, but do not come to the mass meetings. And there are others who sell themselves to the enemy, and who are the scabs.
“In these fifty days of struggle we are not the same people. Perhaps we entered with the idea that the capitalists gave us bad wages because they didn’t realise how badly we lived – but in negotiation they saw we were firm and [we saw that] they were deaf [to our demands], because these were negotiations between enemies. The bosses have the police and army to defend their interests. We have our class – the workers. The government is the government of the capitalists (applause).”
The spirit of the many women present was particularly striking. I noted: “Women to leave factories and march [to the centre] to close down shops.” A housewife expressed her absolute determination to see the strike through to the end: “If at the end of the month I have nothing left, and if it means that my children must eat potatoes, I’ll say to them: eat your potatoes.”
Another man steps forward:
This is a challenge, an affront to us all! They want to deny us the right to work. Where is our strength, where is our power? It is in our unity in struggle, in our mass meetings, in our union. These are the lessons we must tell to the working class.
Another said:
In defending the sacked and imprisoned we are defending ourselves. The press is not our press. It is the capitalist press who deceive us and lie to us.
This meeting set the tone for the massive and combative movement the next day.
3 March as I Saw it
The following day, I wrote a first-hand report of the events that was published in the Militant under the title ‘Eye Witness Account From Vitoria’:
The day of Wednesday 3 March has entered history as a new page of the Spanish workers’ struggle, written in blood. At the end of the first day of a general strike that paralysed the city of Vitoria, regional capital of the Basque province of Álava, two people lay dead, cut down by the bullets of the police. Another two have died of their wounds since.
The actions of this day will echo through the years to the credit of the heroic workers of Spain and the eternal infamy of the corrupt clique of gangsters around Juan Carlos and all their miserable crowd of big business backers nationally and internationally.
The morning of the third began with clashes between the armed police and pickets outside factories, as one plant after another joined the rolling wave of strikes launched as an impressive day of struggle around the demand to re-admit the workers sacked or arrested during the two-month-long general strike in the big factories in Vitoria.
At nine in the morning, large groups of housewives concentrated at various points in the city with empty shopping bags. Their mission – to ensure the shutdown of every shop and bar in the city. Within a few hours, the centre looked like a ghost town so far as these establishments were concerned. Ninety per cent of the shops and bars were closed and shuttered. Throughout the strike, and above all on this day, the working-class women of Vitoria displayed an energy and a militant élan still greater than their husbands.
At one point, a young girl was attacked by an angry shopkeeper, who beat her and seized her identity card, threatening to denounce her to the police. Within minutes, a crowd of women gathered and let him know in no uncertain terms that if he did “we’ll come into your shop after you.” With shopkeepers like that around (a small minority by the way), no wonder one or two windows found themselves in pieces by the end of the day.
About 10.00 am, large groups of workers began to wind their way from the factories on the outskirts towards the town centre. With a calm dignity and iron discipline, these workers’ contingents marched past groups of armed police, at this stage merely watching apprehensively from a distance.
In one place a group of about a thousand workers stretched across the main street, chanting always the same thing: “Re-admit the sacked workers!” “We are workers, come and join us.” And so they did. Within minutes, groups of mainly young workers run along the pavement to join the ranks. Their numbers swell: 1,500, 2,000. The traffic is absolutely blocked for about a mile. Motorists get out and watch, some sullenly, many with a wry grin.
Everybody is waiting for one thing. The sound of a police siren. But where are they? Five minutes pass. Then ten, fifteen, twenty. When will it end? But the police are scattered throughout the city, dashing from one point to another. As one fire is stamped out, another flares up somewhere else. The ‘forces of order’ are fighting something intangible, an amorphous mass that takes on shape to harass and confound them only to disappear the moment when confronted with truncheon and gas.
Suddenly, the ominous wail of sirens is heard. The monster human roadblock disappears at a steady trot round a dozen street corners. As the tail evaporates, up tear three police land-rovers and a bus, the grey one with steel bars in the window and blue lights flashing. Out jump the riot-police, steel helmeted and jackbooted, searching for their prey.
The grises are angry. They lash out with their truncheons at passing cars that fail to drive fast enough. Tearing down likely-looking side-streets, the representatives of police batter at the doors of blocks of flats fruitlessly. No one will open to them. They return to their vans, red-faced and cursing. As the day wears on, their tempers and nerves are gradually frayed by this constant harassment by an unseen enemy.
The ‘enemy’s’ morale rises with each encounter with the hated ‘monopolists of violence’. Their tactics become bolder. And now for the first time, the barricades begin to make their appearance. Who thought of it first? Those young lads pushing a couple of parked cars into the road to block the police van’s exit? Who knows? But now the idea catches the imagination of the masses. Every available object is requisitioned for the task: parked cars, bricks from building sites, concrete slabs, metal drums, lamp posts, anything to hand. The demonstrators set to it with a will.
Within hours, the city is covered with barricades of this improvised character. Their purpose? To choke the city’s arteries, to block the traffic, to stop the buses. In all of this they succeed brilliantly. By afternoon, Vitoria is at a standstill. No sooner do the police succeed in removing one, then two others take its place. In the end, they give up the attempt as hopeless.
The strikers had not seen the barricades as a means of fighting, but as a way of stopping the traffic. But in the measure that the police tire of removing barricades, they become a ‘permanent fixture’. Gaining confidence all the while, the workers cease to run away at the first sight of the police. Now they stand by the barricades sitting and chatting, or building them up. They take pride in their creations, working away to fill in gaps and remove imperfections – almost like a work of art. No one will shift them now.
Police vans drive past the vicinity, pretending not to notice. Unfortunate motorists, whose vehicles have been ‘requisitioned’ by the army of labour, remonstrate with the workers, but receive a polite but firm reply. The car is no longer theirs. It is the barricade’s.
The courage of the strikers rises with their self-confidence. They are an authority now on par with, or greater than, the powers that be. They have the government and the town hall. But the streets are ours.
All day long, the battle raged on, with police chasing demonstrators through the streets and alleys of the old town. In the morning, the police had opened fire on workers, injuring many, though there were no fatalities – yet. This is how I related the events in my report:
The day has already brought its casualties, though mercifully few. A girl is brought into a block of flats with a cut on the head. The ever-present women utter angry comments: “What kind of people are they? They beat us down when we go on the streets to fight for a bit of bread. That’s all we’re fighting for, for a bit of bread.”
Imanol adds:
What I remember is that on 3 March we had gathered together in Arana Street, in the San José church and after breakfast, first thing in the morning, we would meet with the Representative Committees to sum up the situation, because in the local assemblies there was a lot of participation from the factories, but in a joint assembly of so many workshops, not everyone intervened and the issues remained pending the general situation. But, having finished, we found that when we arrived, the police were already there.
When I arrived, the place was surrounded. There was no way of getting in, and I remember trying to distract the police (you don’t know what you were doing at that time because you were not thinking straight) I picked up some stones or whatever… But the stones would not have landed anywhere near the cops.
Andoni Txasco reported that:
We students participated in all this. There were school students, perhaps imitating the actions of the older people, or through our organisation and the communications that we had established. We held our own assemblies, where we elected our representatives and then we went to the co-ordinating committees and joined the columns of workers who came from the industrial estates.
When the column that came from Mercedes-Benz arrived at the avenue that at that time was called Avenida del Generalísimo Franco (today it is the Avenida Gasteiz), the police opened fire with real bullets, and there were already the first cases of people wounded by bullets. One of them I remember was Lobera, who was a comrade of the Association until he died a few years ago. Lobera was wounded in the leg in the morning.
Santiago added:
But there were more places where people were shot, not just on Avenida. Ormachea, for example, was a student of Jesús Obrero. And that was at five in the afternoon. Another man was shot in the throat in the morning.
Andoni pointed out that:
Until then the, police had respected the churches. They had never intervened in the churches, but that day they invaded them. They entered Los Angeles and Los Desamparados. There were about thirty of us fleeing from the police. We had to take refuge in Los Desamparados and thank goodness Don Javier took us into the sacristy, otherwise, God knows what would have happened. The cops entered, armed to the teeth, but the priest got us out through the back door. Actually, he was a fascist, but he said: “Well, before they come in and wreck my church, I’d better let you out the back”.
This was a warning of what was being prepared.
The massacre
Late that afternoon, more than 5,000 people attended the general assembly convoked at the Church of St Francis. The church was packed with unsuspecting men, women and children, who had no idea of what was to happen next. Santiago recalls:
At 5.00 pm on the day of the general strike, thousands of workers with their wives and, in many cases, children, made their way to the church where the mass meeting or assembly was due to take place. Over 5,000 people were already inside the building and thousands more were heading for the meeting. In the light of experience of earlier assemblies of this sort, no violence was expected. Mothers were playing with their children outside the church.
The ‘incident’ began when detachments of armed police began to disperse the workers heading for the meeting. The representatives of ‘public order’ had decided that the assembly would not take place. But instead of blocking the church entrance before the meeting started, they waited until many people were inside before moving in to ‘dislodge’ the occupants. No clearer proof of murderous intent could be required.
The police were stationed behind the church, and they left room for people to enter. It later became clear that this was a deliberate tactic. The church was packed to capacity while hundreds stood outside. Tensions mounted as armed police in armoured Jeeps began surrounding the church and ordered that it be cleared.
As no attempt was made to stop people from entering the church, the people took it as a sign that all was well. Why shouldn’t they? Other mass meetings had ended without incident. The day’s action had finished, so there was no reason to suspect anything.
Santiago, who was inside the church, describes what happened:
In the afternoon, at 5 o’clock, the general assembly convened in the church of San Francisco in the neighbourhood of Zaramaga and, as usual, we came from the old part of town where we lived, together with a group of friends who had experienced the events of that morning. We entered the church a quarter of an hour before it was due to start. But the police were already surrounding the church, which was already full. There were about 4,000 people because the church was different from now. There was more space, and it was packed with people.
The police then ordered people to leave the church, but they refused. According to the 1953 Concordat between the Vatican and Franco, the police and military required the permission of a bishop before entering a Catholic church. When the police demanded entry to clear the church, the Bishop of Gasteiz abstained, thus giving the green light for what happened next.
Santiago describes those fatal moments:
They surrounded the church, and people inside began to get nervous. We were waiting for the representative commissions because there had been a meeting outside and then they were supposed to come to the church at 5 o’clock, and start the assembly. However, as we were surrounded, they could not enter, and they were the key point of reference for the movement.
Then there was a general murmuring, reflecting the anxiety of the people, who were wondering what to do: “Do we stay, or leave?” The people said: “We are not going to dissolve. We’re not going out. We’re going to wait”. That was the slogan voiced by some of the few people who had some authority: “Let us wait for the representative commissions.”
I remember that suddenly you could hear a crowd of people, a tumult, and two policemen tried to enter the church. But what were two policemen doing inside the church? People started booing and shouting: “Out! Out!”, “We are staying here”. We were not going to leave the church.
For us, it was unheard of to have armed policemen entering a sacred place, which was traditionally protected. I did not expect such a thing. Maybe in the morning there might have been some incident. But surely not now? However, my doubts were soon settled.
Suddenly, the atmosphere was shattered by a noise like a bomb exploding. The windows were shattered and the police started throwing smoke cans into the building. They were firing rubber bullets and live rounds. The church was rapidly filled with smoke, so you could not see anything. It was impossible to breathe.
All hell broke out inside the church. The people did whatever they could to get out. There was a stampede for the exit. Some people climbed out of the windows, others made for the door, but that was impossible. I took refuge in the sacristy that was under the altar steps. We took refuge there for a while, because in the sacristy there was still a little air. We knew that there was something bad, very bad, happening outside. But it did not enter our heads that people would be killed.
Soon the smoke thinned a little and we decided to get out down an alley, running like mad. We helped some kids, little children of workers who had stayed in the sacristy, we jumped the fence and we ran towards our neighbourhood. And from outside the church, the first slogans began to be heard. People were shouting: “They have killed two workers”. That for me was something incredible, something unexpected and shocking.
Andoni adds:
There is clear proof that the police did not want a peaceful outcome that day. There are recordings of police radio conversations where one hears: “Surround the church”, and another one says: “Listen, I have to go to move a barricade,” and the answer comes back: “No, don’t you move from there, because if you do, they’ll escape from the church”.
When the grises fired numerous tear-gas canisters into the building, shattering windows, they had the clear intention of causing a panic. But the workers kept their heads. Somebody got to the microphone and issued a call for a permanent assembly. The workers stayed put, despite the constant hail of tear-gas bombs which made it difficult to breathe.
Only when they were literally on hands and knees with faces pressed to the floor to try to avoid the gas did the situation become hopeless. The choice was to face the police or choke to death. Inside the church, a voice from a loudspeaker declared: “If they are going to kill us, let them do it in the open.”
The people began to file out. It was at this point that the police opened fire, killing two workers, and wounding countless others, many seriously, of which at least two others have since died. Among these is at least one person, José Castillo, thirty-two years old, who had nothing to do with the strike. Five others were teenagers.
Andoni says:
Even after the gassing, if the police had withdrawn, people would have left, half asphyxiated, but they would have left. But on the contrary, they stood by all the windows, as well as the door and as people left, they were subjected to really savage beatings. And then the shooting began, and it was totally indiscriminate.
Two died there and then: Aznar and Pedro Mari, on the spot where the memorial stone still stands, and then Romualdo, who was taken to hospital seriously wounded, but passed away at 11 that evening. Another two died, one on 5 April and the other on 7 April. There were also a lot of people wounded.
Those killed were: Pedro Martínez Ocio, aged twenty-seven; Francisco Aznar, aged seventeen; Romualdo Barroso, aged nineteen; José Castillo, aged forty-three; and Bienvenido Pareda, aged thirty-two. People outside the church who tried to go to their aid were beaten up. Later that evening, people rushing to the hospitals to check on injured relatives were also attacked with tear gas and rubber bullets.
Imanol told me:
I remember that as I was wandering through the streets, I saw a man lying on the pavement who had been shot, and I lifted him up.
About three weeks ago there was an assembly here, and it turns out that that man was present. He had been working in the Forjas steelworks. In the end he approached me, saying: “Imanol, you took me to the car. I was on the ground, you grabbed my arm and you took me to a man with a car, and you wanted me to get in. But I protested that you were going to damage the car. There were three of us injured people in the same car.”
There were 4 or 5000, but there were a further 10,000 people outside who could not get into the church. When the people on the outside became aware of the situation, they started shouting at the police, throwing sticks, stones and anything that came to hand.
In the court summaries appear a list of those who were admitted to the Santiago hospital. It amounts to sixty-eight people. Needless to say, this figure does not include all those who were injured. There were at least 150 people wounded, not only by gunshots, but also suffering from the concussion they got as a result of tremendous beatings. The number given of those wounded is undoubtedly too low, as many of the injured stayed away from the hospitals to avoid arrest and the prospect of further ill-treatment at the hands of the police. In cases where the bullet wounds did not affect vital organs, many of those people did not want to go to the hospitals, because that meant leaving your personal details, and retaliation could be swift and severe.
“A Massacre? Ok, That’s Good. Over.”
The Spanish authorities issued a communiqué claiming that police were forced to use firearms to free themselves from a hostile crowd using broken church windows and statues as missiles. Despite these official claims, there were no police injuries reported at the church.
One police inspector was injured later that night when a petrol bomb was thrown at the local police station and two others suffered minor injuries. But subsequent investigations found no trace of any offensive weapons that might have been used by the workers on 3 March. The victims were all unarmed and defenceless. Police radio communication during the course of the day was picked up and recorded the chilling conversation between police officers. This tells us all we need to know:
Proceed with clearing the church. Over. So, we have it surrounded by personnel outside. We are going to have to use arms! Over. Get them out however you can… Send me more arms. We’ve shot more than 2,000 bullets. Over. Are there any wounded? Over. At the moment none of us are wounded. Over. Ok. That’s good. Over. There was certainly a massacre here. Over. Ok, that’s good. Over.
When word of the killings spread, a wave of fury was unleashed by the workers, who threw up barricades and rioted well into the night. The atmosphere was such that the soldiers sent by the government to strangle the movement, as well as even many police officers, refused to even take down the barricades that they encountered.
I reported at the time:
The news of the shooting stunned the whole city. But instead of cowing the workers, it caused a wave of anger. Those few factories, like Michelin, which had not hitherto been involved, downed tools. Workers vented their anger by tearing down telephone boxes and lamp posts to erect barricades.
On the following day, the workers of Pamplona nearby downed tools in a general strike. There were demonstrations in Bilbao and a general strike was called for the whole Basque Country for Monday 8 March. The repercussions of the Vitoria killings have been felt throughout the country.
At the funeral of the murdered workers, a huge demonstration took place, with no intervention on the part of the police. Estimates vary from anything upwards of 100,000. Deputations of workers from all over Spain attended this moving ceremony which was more than just a funeral. Political speeches were delivered over the graveside of these working-class martyrs. As one of the strike leaders expressed it: “This is not just a bereavement for the families of these men. It is a bereavement for the whole of the working class.”
There and then, the workers pledged themselves not to betray the cause for which their comrades had given their lives. Instead of instilling fear within the hearts of the workers, these bloody assassinations have spurred them on to still-greater efforts in the cause of the working class and the socialist revolution in Spain.
Today there is not a single worker in Vitoria who thinks he is on strike for 6,000 pesetas. It is a confrontation between the working class and the dictatorship.
At the funerals of the victims, a homily written jointly by all of the clergy of Gasteiz accused the police of murder. It said:
The forces used death-dealing arms in absurd abundance, in a completely irrational way, without prior warning, against a defenceless crowd, which had gone out of its way to avoid any kind of provocation… The workers’ deaths were absolutely unjustified and must therefore be considered as what they really were, homicide.
The priests called for those responsible for the massacre to be identified and arrested. In defiance of a government decree, issued the day before, that police were authorised to raid churches to break up unauthorised meetings, the clergy reassured those present that the churches would continue to be available for workers’ assemblies.
Following the funeral mass, the coffins of the three men were carried shoulder-high and walked through the city for two hours, passing lines of heavily armed police and Guardia Civil three deep carrying rifles, pistols and submachine guns at the headquarters of the provincial government.
As the huge crowd passed by, the defiant mood of the people of Vitoria was described by London Times correspondent, Harry Debelius:
Probably the most massive non-violent act of defiance in forty years of Spanish history took place in this Basque city today as thousands of people attending a funeral insulted armed police with silent gestures. Insulting the police has been a court martial offence, even for civilians, ever since General Franco overthrew the Second Spanish Republic. But the people of Vitoria did not seem to care today as they mourned their dead.
Over the following days, during protests in the Basque Country and Catalonia held in solidarity with the dead of Vitoria, two more men died at the hands of Spanish police. In Basauri, an industrial suburb of Bilbao, a nineteen-year-old steel worker Vicente Antón Ferrero was shot in the head by the Guardia Civil.
In the Catalan city of Tarragona, police attacked a demonstration involving hundreds of workers chanting “Vitoria brothers, we do not forget.” Juan Gabriel Rodrigo, also aged nineteen, fell from a roof, where he had climbed to escape from the police attack, and died.
There were protests in other countries too. In Rome, workers demonstrating at the Spanish Embassy attacked it with petrol bombs and missiles. Italian police fired live ammunition at the crowd, killing fifty-three-year-old Mario Marrota, who just happened to be passing.
A Grim Aftermath
After the massacre, the management remained as stubborn as ever. They were determined not to reinstate the sacked workers, or to open the gates of the factories. Fraga Iribarne ordered Judge Juan Bautista Pardo to impose an obligatory settlement. That relieved the bosses from the painful necessity of readmitting those who had been sacked. They would say: “No, no, my hands are tied by the judge’s decision.”
Financial Times correspondent, Roger Matthews, described the tense atmosphere in Vitoria that day:
The paramilitary Guardia Civil, armed with automatic weapons, stand in groups of thirty, guarding the main roads into the town. Convoys of riot police tour the principal streets, their Land Rovers and wire meshed buses forced to detour past some working-class areas where barricades erected last night are still standing…
All factories in this city of 170,000 people are shut, as are all the banks and main commercial areas. Workers standing in small groups on street corners incorrectly think that there may be a dozen dead, and wild rumours of a military take-over vie with others even more alarming.
Imanol recalls:
In the following days, the image that most sticks in my mind was one of dark, greyish Land Rovers with the windows down and the back door half open and driving at an intimidating speed, with the sirens blaring and men pointing their shotguns… You did not know whether you were coming or going.
In fact, the repression continued on the next day. In those cases where people were hospitalised, the police entered their houses searching everybody and everything. And there were always threats: “Do not tell anyone about this. The bullet wounds you cannot hide, but the beating we gave you later you had better not mention”, and so on.
The medical reports were also part of the cover up because many of the doctors who were attending the wounded were military men, and they did not allow you to take any bullet away. They wanted to prevent any possibility of carrying out ballistic tests. The one exception was a person from the association who was given a bullet. Apart from this, there is no proof.
Andoni:
The police were thirsting for revenge. That was clear on the day of the funeral. You just have to listen to the conversations that were picked up from police radios during the funeral of the victims.
“How can we tolerate this? They are walking about freely, but God knows what they are up to… They are insulting us!” And from the other end of the line, you can hear: “Yes, yes, yes. But stay steady – hold on.” And there is another one who wants to charge, to attack the entire funeral procession, which shows that they were not satisfied with what they had done on 3 March, but wanted to keep lashing out, beating and crushing.
A curfew was imposed. They would not let groups of more than two people walk on the street. But the next day we had to go to the factory in the morning. The normal thing was to hold an assembly after what had happened the previous day, and so we said: “Well, this is a strike and we will continue the strike for as long as it takes”.
But to get home in the morning from the industrial estate in Amarra was a problem. Vitoria was an occupied city. It was impossible to travel around freely. In the afternoon, together with four of my friends, we approached the surrounding districts to see what the situation was. Vitoria was devastated. After finding out that workers had been killed the previous day, the people flew into a rage. Everywhere you saw furniture broken, trees felled, cars and trucks pushed across the road. There is a photo of a Gamesa truck in the Portal of Villarreal with barricades made of logs and other things.
We were surveying the scene, when we noticed a grey bus with two or three Jeeps. Nothing was happening, there was no type of disturbance, there were no people on the street, other than the four of us. We saw them coming towards us and we thought: “We have not done anything, but this looks bad. Let’s run.” But they had already surrounded us, and three or four other Jeeps came from behind.
They caught us, although two managed to escape and I started to run and I was afraid that they would hit me in the eyes, because I already had an injury in the left eye from school. While picking blackberries I was hit by a stone. Thanks to that, I was spared from military service. If it had not been for that, I would not have been in Vitoria at that time.
Fearing that I would get hit by a blow, a rubber ball or something in the eye, I threw myself against the wall and covered my head. But it was no good, they started hitting me, and when I saw that they did not stop, I said: “Look, arrest me, do what you want, but don’t keep hitting me because I already have one eye screwed and you are going to fuck up the other one”.
As I was telling them that, they grabbed my arms so I could not cover myself, they pulled me away from the wall and showered blows on my head, my face, and one of them took aim, and hit me in the good eye. They knocked me senseless. I did not even feel any pain. It was like an anaesthetic, something between the flow of adrenaline, nervousness and the impotence of the situation… I was left blank, while they continued screaming at me: “you bastard, communist, son of a bitch…”
They tied my hands with wire, and tightened them as hard as they could. I think it was near a lamp post or telephone pole. Something about some barricade.
They took me to a house and the first thing I said to them: “I don’t know if I’m bleeding. I can feel something liquid there.” And they told me: “No, no, there is no blood, it must be tears.” At the beginning I said: “Well, when you cover an eye tightly, your vision gets blurred and you do not see well.” I thought it must be that. They put me up in a house, they put something cold on me. I do not know if it was water, ice or what, but I still could not see and they took me along Los Herrán street, crossing the barricades, to the hospital.
I was there for a month and I started on my Odyssey. From there I went to Madrid, to Barcelona, until I ended up at the University Clinic of Pamplona and after I do not know how many operations, they told me: “There is no remedy for this. The best thing is to empty the socket.” So that is what they did. They put an inner ball, a prosthesis, and then an aesthetic prosthesis.
I could not see anything with my left eye, and my right eye suffered from photophobia, so I had to be at home in the dark. I could not see light, or television, or anything. And after all that, I had constant pain. Particularly at the time of admission, the pain was tremendous, even with morphine. Then for some reason (a cold, I think) I got conjunctivitis and, in the end, as a result of the infection, the artificial eyeball was spontaneously ejected from the socket.
Even now I continue with problems from time to time, requiring a change of prosthesis. Right now, I am waiting for them to operate on the eyelid, because with so much time with the prosthesis, the muscle has lost its elasticity, so they have to restore its tension, because that also creates a movement of the prosthesis that at the same time produces conjunctivitis, and so on.
I now have two per cent vision. If I look at you straight, I do not see you. They tell me that I manage very well on the street. I walk down the street, and, as I walk, the world opens up. If I catch a good angle it can be ten per cent, and in others it is zero per cent. But at least I am here to tell the story.
These are the memories I have of that day.
In Carabanchel
Then came the arrests. At the end of the strike, Imanol and other strike leaders were arrested and taken to Madrid.
Imanol:
We were first taken to the Puerta del Sol [it’s a reference to the DGS, the dreaded Francoite secret police], then we were sent to Carabanchel, where although there was a whole gallery of political prisoners, to our surprise, we were put in a reformatory for young kids under twenty years old. They put us there with the young people. After three days of being held incommunicado we were allowed to go out and mix with them.
They were young kids from marginal areas of the city who, as a result of their upbringing had been turned into petty criminals, and arrested. This experience helped us to understand the common prisoners who, out of foolish prejudices, people tend to look down upon. In the reformatory, you begin to realise what kind of world these kids come from (but I am digressing).
There were three of us there: Jesús Naves, myself and one member of the UGT, a worker from the Mercedes factory, Emilio Alonso. Anyway, there were three days when we did not have any water, and we needed water to wash ourselves. There was a well in the yard. We went there and we washed as best we could. On the third day we told an official that we did not have any water, “What do you mean, you have no water?” He checked and saw that there was no water. Yet not one of the common prisoners had protested. They did not feel any need for water. That was the social stratum from which they came!
There was a Trotskyist, a young lad from Madrid, though I do not know why he was there, and he asked us why we did not explain what happened in Vitoria. We had no problem to do this. “OK. I’ll take charge of notifying people.” Two days earlier they had arrested the Executive Committee of the Communist Youth. They were there also, as was a relative of Ybarra, the pacifist. And when people were told that the guys from Vitoria have no problem talking about their experience, they said: “Ah, fine, okay”.
But the PCE members reacted differently. They said no, why should they? “And anyway, we were not there, so we do not know the facts of what occurred in Vitoria. How are we going to discuss that?” And so on and so forth. I was amused because the Trotskyist says to them: “But you talk about the Russian Revolution, were you witnesses of that?” (Laughter) They had closed minds and they did not want their prejudices called into question.
The reason for the reluctance of the PCE leaders to discuss Vitoria is not hard to understand. At this very moment, Carrillo was doing everything in his power to enter into negotiations with elements in the government. The last thing he wanted was a general strike – a demand that the PCE had quietly dropped. They were particularly hostile to the movement in Vitoria because they did not control it. They felt threatened by the idea of the representative commissions, which flew in the face of the policy of the PCE and CCOO to work within the framework of the Vertical Union.
Although they could not openly condemn the workers of Vitoria, they did their best to prevent any information getting out and did everything in their power to prevent the movement from being generalised. This boycott extended even to the world of the political prisoners behind the walls of Carabanchel prison. To this day, Imanol cannot conceal his sense of deep bitterness at that betrayal:
The thing that hurt me most – and it hurts me deep inside – is that somehow, I expected something more from the PCE. And when you see what they have done, you feel hurt yourself, don’t you? I don’t want to throw stones at them, but I remember that in those days they had an unofficial magazine. It was not exactly legal, but it was tolerated, and acted with relative freedom. The magazine was called Triunfo. And on 13 March – ten days after the massacre – talking about the events in Vitoria, it states that we were playing into the hands of the right, using violent methods, and so on.
That was the same story, as I heard that day spread around in the juvenile reformatory in Carabanchel prison. But after spending three months with the young people in the reformatory, they transferred us to the political prisoner’s gallery, where the leading staff of the PCE were being held. Sánchez Montero, he was the Chief of some Party organ or other (I do not know what they called him). Someone called Santiago was their leading member in Galicia; and there was another leader from Vizcaya. But Camacho was not in the prison at that moment.
When we arrived at that wing of the prison, there were other people from small groups, some of whom (from Guernica) were known to me, who had been arrested for some reason or other, and also some people from Lekeitio. The normal thing was to ask what had happened in Vitoria, because we used to have general meetings. The PCE people formed the majority group, but unlike the young people, they did not participate at all. In fact, they completely avoided us. It was as if the kind of egalitarian, transparent, participatory conduct that was typical of the whole of the people at that time was anathema to them. They did not participate at all.
Who Gave the Order?
AW: “But the question is, who gave the order? I say that had to have come from above. What do you think?”
Imanol answered: “I believe that the people responsible for the massacre were the police. The policeman is in the service of the interests of the ruling class, and when they give the order, they act.”
AW: “Yes, someone gives the order, it cannot be just the police. That has to be at the highest level, I would say. El País1 says that: ‘The use of firearms was not so casual.’ That same morning, they were already used to repress demonstrations called by the general strike. Five days later, in another demonstration in Basauri (Vizcaya) called in solidarity with the victims of Vitoria, eighteen-year-old Vicente Antón Ferrero was shot dead by the Civil Guard.”
Imanol: “They would have known in advance what they came for, I believe, because they had come from Logroño, from Burgos, from Valladolid, from Miranda… So those bodies were not in the service of the governor here…”
Andoni then added:
When Martín Villa and Fraga Iribarne came here after the funerals they made it very clear that this has been an example to others. Anyone who steps out of line knows what happened in Vitoria. So, beware! Fraga Iribarne said it in so many words, and so did that sordid man Martín Villa. He said “those who bring people onto the street already know about the tragic consequences that such events can bring.”
They had it planned. They knew that if this movement was not halted, it could have resulted in a total change: a revolution. So, for them it was a tremendous danger. If the movement in Vitoria were to triumph, everything would have been changed, not only at the labour level, but also at the political, social level. Everything they were planning would have been derailed, and the movement would have spread everywhere.
Santiago also reported that:
The primary political responsibility of that first government of the transition of Fraga, Areilza and Arias was at first a timid attempt at reform. When they said there would be no political parties, only political associations, it was a first attempt to introduce certain changes to the system, while maintaining its essentials, to preserve the power of the multinationals, the power of capital. And the movement of 3 March in Vitoria was dangerous, not only here, but throughout the Basque Country, in Madrid, in Catalonia, Valencia and in many other places.
They said: We must put an end to this in the most brutal way possible, through state terrorism. And if shooting and gassing people in a church is not terrorism, God only knows what is.
Afterwards, however, we see that there was a change. It was now clear to the system itself, to the big multinationals like Mercedes-Benz, who had a lot of information about what happened here on 3 March, that it was no longer worth their while supporting the government of Areilza, Fraga or Arias Navarro. And they saw that there was another possibility (Suárez, the king…) for a ‘democratic opening’ and that meant bringing in people who had been in the opposition: the Communist Party, the Socialist Party and other parties.
Imanol adds:
After 3 March, Martin Villa issued statements saying that they were not trying to shoot at specific people, but randomly. The same as the ‘collateral damage’ that occurs in wars: the purpose of those too is to scare people. And if we believe that power is insane, it is even more frightening because collateral damage is aimed at anyone who gets involved or participates. It is a way of terrifying the populace.
So, what Martin Villa said shows that the aim of the events in Vitoria was to put the fear of God into the rest. See what happened there… All the people who took part just out of curiosity or whatever, were supposed to draw the conclusions. But I think that this tactic backfired. Instead of frightening people it created an immediate tide of sympathy…
Before the massacre, the events of Vitoria were not known because there were many struggles going on everywhere. Before 3 March, our struggle did not seem to stand out particularly. People were not going to be following what Vitoria was doing, how many companies were on strike, and so on. I think that went unnoticed. But after the five workers were killed, people began to sit up and pay attention. They were asking what has happened there, and why. So, instead of frightening the people, it provoked sympathy. Then they realised that there could be no future on this basis. We were adding fuel to the fire…
The Policy of Social Anaesthesia
Then they changed tactics and said “We are going to have to act smart here.” They began to say: “Let’s go easy on the stick, and use more politics”. That is the meaning of social anaesthesia. This is an issue that causes controversy among people, and I have seen it cause sharp disagreements even between people who participated in the events.
At that moment I was in the jail of Carabanchel and, from time to time, I read some pamphlets, some written material, because we were totally isolated, and you did not know what was happening, but some news got through, so I believed that I knew what was going on.
The men in power thought: “Well let’s start here”, and the new vocabulary was something like “it was all very well to fight in the time of the dictatorship, there was no other way, but at this moment, now the dictator is gone, we have started laying the foundations of democracy, and in a democracy we are all in the same boat, and we have to start learning how to row together, because we have interests in common, and you have to enter into the game, participate and elect the best people.”
So now came that moment where those party members who had joined the strike and worked to make it possible, thought: “What the hell! Now our time has come. Now we are going to be legalised.” And then the joint struggle is abandoned, and the interests of each individual collective comes to the fore. Then the campaign begins. The assemblies are maintained, but they are assemblies to promote this or that group or faction that later will be legalised and will somehow be closer to this power, and even become part of that power, designing new social policies, or the new legality, which takes the place of class struggle.
Of course, that was the kiss of death to the assemblies, those democratic forums of debate and decision-making. And after a while, we learned that the Constitution was already more or less done. On the one hand, you also learn that the state and the army – that same army that was fascist at the time of the Republic – turns out to be the axis of the new democracy, without any change. The Armed Forces were not purged, and neither were the police and judges that during forty years of dictatorship carried out summary trials, military trials and death sentences…
The Courts change their name; the Court of Public Order became the National Court. The Constitution says that we live in a secular or non-denominational state, but the Catholic Church has as much power and wealth as ever, and with a grip on social life that is tremendous… The agrarian reform was not carried out, nor are the interests of the victims of the Civil War taken into consideration. And then came the Pacts of the Moncloa, wage moderation, restructuring of companies with European funds, staff reductions, unemployment and then privatisation, with firms sold off to the highest bidder.
Then Ventura Mariño, our lawyer, who was a member of the PSOE of Llopis (the historicals) tells us about the huge amounts of money that Willy Brandt of the German SPD gave to the UGT and the Socialist Party. And there we were, caught in a trap…
Santiago reported that:
At the funeral I saw there were many lawyers, who had been defending the victims and the relatives of the murdered workers. There were also many priests. One of the lawyers had been beaten too. Javier Calderón was a lawyer from Vitoria, who took the defence proceedings of several relatives and wounded people. And they practically had to go underground, holding meetings on the street or in the park, to prepare the defence. That was after 3 March. Javier Calderón was murdered. They planted a bomb in his car. That was probably the extreme right.
Many of those lawyers abandoned the fight. They said: “Now there is going to be a new phase, in which there will be a full democracy.” And they launched the slogan: “3 March must be forgiven and forgotten.” That was the way to deactivate the movement.
They signed up to the new order, in which they merely changed the names of the old institutions, although in reality they were still essentially the same thing.
The armed police became the National Police, because it sounds more democratic, like in France. We will call the regions autonomous communities, while keeping the fundamentals of the state. And, of course, political and economic power remain entrenched.
El País of 30 August 2016 concluded with the headline: ‘A Tragedy That Hastened Arias Navarro’s Suspension’.
The individual criminal responsibilities of the events in Vitoria were never clarified. “The eviction order started from the Civil Government. If there were orders superior to the governor or if the way of eviction was the decision of the commanders, it is difficult to determine without the existence of conclusive evidence,” says the historian Carlos Carnicero, who assures that there was no will to investigate what happened, because it was known what companies intervened.
It did, however, have political consequences related to the cessation, four months later, of the president of the government, Carlos Arias Navarro, and of the Minister of the Interior, Manuel Fraga. The king held a tense meeting with the Chief Executive about what happened.
“The events of Vitoria had enough national and international publicity, which undoubtedly contributed to the decision to change the Executive in July 1976”, Carnicero maintains. It also accelerated the unity of the opposition, with the merger of the Democratic Junta and the Democratic Convergence Platform two weeks later.
There are still suspicions that the government used the Vitoria massacre “as a threat against the proliferation of labour conflicts after the death of Dictator Franco,” the specialist added.
Paradoxically, none of the aggressors were arrested. Three union leaders were imprisoned and pardoned five months later by the already president Adolfo Suárez.
A court case was brought in Argentina for the massacre and the judge requested the extradition of Martín Villa, but the Spanish government refused, and continues to refuse to this day. Martín Villa was given a position on the board of directors of SAREB – the ‘bad bank’, which dealt with the toxic assets during the bank bailout after the 2007 crisis.
Fraga (‘the street belongs to me’) Iribarne went on to become leader of the right-wing Alianza Popular, which later morphed into the Popular Party. Now hailed as a democrat, there is a bust of him in the Senate.
Each year, on the anniversary of the massacre, thousands still gather in Vitoria to demand justice for the five who were murdered on 3 March 1976.
Forty years on, no one has been convicted of the murders.
[1] El País, 30 August 2016.