The ETA members confessed to womanizers, snitches, book readers and mountaineers

The Memorial Center will show in its permanent exhibition several of the files that ETA members filled out when they joined the terrorist organization and that it kept in its files. The tokens, which can be seen at the headquarters of the Memorial in Vitoria-Gasteiz, were found by the French Police on October 3, 2004 in the zulo baptized as Txoriak (birds), located under a house in the town of Saint-Pierre d ‘Irube, six kilometers from Bayonne.

The members of ETA, during the seventies and a good part of the eighties, upon joining the terrorist organization had to fill out a form that was given to them by those responsible for the gang and provide a passport-size photograph that was attached to the form. At that time the ETA people moved freely through France. Despite being a clandestine organization, that feeling of impunity led them to prepare and keep this documentation.

Each document contained a series of epigraphs, similar in all cases, that the new members of ETA had to complete. Thus, they had to put the name and surname, date and place of birth, address of home, studies or place of work. But there were also other epigraphs such as the “revolutionary name” (iraultzarako izena), the ETA apparatus in which they were framed, if they had been arrested or what they thought of ETA. Other sections mention the reasons why he joined ETA, if they had a position within the band, if they had previously collaborated with the group and even their personal hobbies, according to a note from said Center.

The cards show a combination of hobbies (they mention the mountain, reading, another confesses to being a “womanizer”, etc.) with all kinds of justifications for violence. Pablo Gude Pego, killed in a confrontation with the Civil Guard in 1984, takes the opportunity to expose an alleged Falangist who would live “under me” in Renteria. Francisco Javier Aranceta, who died in 1980 while committing an attack that cost the life of the civil guard Rufino Muñoz, is the only one who distrusts and disagrees with the fact that all ETA members fill out these forms in case they fell into the hands of the Police, as it ended. happening.

The operation carried out on October 3, 2004, as a result of an investigation carried out by the French police information services (DGSI) and the Civil Guard, led to the arrest of the head of ETA, Mikel Antza, and the discovery of a network of zulos and arsenals of the terrorist gang. An important volume of documentation was found in a den located under a house in the town of Saint Pierre de Irube, owned by the couple formed by Michel Negrete (Baracaldo, 1953) and Martha Alcalde, who died in 2000.

The zulo’s name, Txoriak, corresponded to the woman’s nickname, as revealed by Mikel Antza during the trial held in Paris in November 2010.

The subway was barely fifteen meters square. The walls of the zulo, shaped like the letter U, were covered by metal shelves in which, in an orderly manner, folders and filing cabinets that kept a large amount of documentation were stacked. Upon discovering the hiding place, the first policemen who entered made a cursory examination of some papers chosen at random from the large amount of accumulated material and found that there was an abundance of old documentation, from the seventies and eighties in many cases, which led to the assumption that investigators that it could be the historical archive of the terrorist gang.

Among that documentation were 69 typewritten files, folio size, corresponding to as many ETA members with their photograph.

When the trial was held in Paris against Mikel Antza and the other ETA members captured in the same operation, the number one of the gang demanded that the French authorities return the documents that were kept in the Saint Pierre d’Irube den ensuring that it was the “historical archive” of the terrorist organization.

The files of the ETA members, as well as the rest of the documentation contained in that file, were delivered by the French authorities to the Spanish authorities in February 2018 with a double objective: that they had judicial value in the National Court and that their final destination was the Memorial Center.

Documentation from France is currently under the control of the National High Court’s Office as it is still being studied by teams from the National Police and the Civil Guard. However, the Prosecutor’s Office has authorized the transfer to the Memorial Center of some documents and effects, among which are the aforementioned files, so that they can be used in the permanent exhibition that has been installed at the Foundation’s headquarters in Vitoria.

The Memorial understands that there are three reasons for including these files in the exhibition: first, it is convenient to identify the victims, but also the perpetrators, each in their role; second, to present evidence of the internal activity of a terrorist organization; and third, the symbolic value of the fact that the file of the terrorists ends in the Memorial of their victims.

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