Original subtitles

HISTORY IS THE THREAD THAT WEAVES THE FABRIC OF TIME

IT'S A LONG THREAD FULL OF KNOTS NO ONE CAN COMPLETELY UNTANGLE

THESE ARE THE KNOTS OF OUR HISTORY

THE BUTCHER OF MONDRAGÓN

THE BUTCHER OF MONDRAGÓN

WAS THE LEADER OF THE DONOSTI COMMANDO

One of his first "accomplishments" was the assassination of a boy.

FIRST BOY TO BE KILLED BY TERRORISM IN EUSKADI

He affixed a bomb to a car.

The boy was playing, he picked it up

and the bomb killed him. It didn't kill the guard.

Such is the "greatness" of this terrorist.

The Donosti commando killed for pleasure.

They were killing machines. It was automatic, they didn't think.

They killed for the sake of killing.

Zabarte liked to be playful.

My relationship with him, still to this day, is one of...

I don't know, like a normal person...

He liked to joke around, he was a bit of a joker, and...

I have very good memories of Zabarte, I mean, as a person.

THE CHALLENGE ETA

03 FIRE AND LEAD

BITERI STREET

JUNE 14 1984

We mounted a big operation in San Sebastián and its surrounding areas

to search a large number of homes and residences

where we suspected we'd find, either members of the Donosti commando...

CIVIL GUARD COMMANDER

...or people who were linked to it.

Our section chief...

...summoned us and said...

CIVIL GUARD STAFF SERGEANT

"Come on, guys, let's get ready, we're going to a meeting."

When we got there, we saw...

the man formerly known as Commander Galindo,

Captain Vaquero...

CAPTAIN VAQUERO - COMMANDER GALINDO

Captain Vaquero turned to us and said,

"We're going to carry out an operation

that is probably going to involve finding members of ETA.

We don't know how many there may be."

Commander Galindo didn't want any death casualties.

We left our vehicles parked a good distance away from the target zone.

As we walked along the street, there was dead silence.

You could feel significant tension in the air.

When we reached the door, the doorstep had been marked by intelligence services.

We knocked on the door and no one answered.

I remember one of the intelligence officers,

without thinking twice,

threw himself with his full weight against the door,

and rebounded. It was excessive.

I don't know how he managed not to injure himself.

We immediately all tried to tear down the door, but it was impossible.

I can clearly remember the time.

It was 4:17 in the morning.

A RELATIVE OF ETA PRISONERS

I slept in the same room with my brother and sister.

There were...

three ETA members in another room,

and my parents, in their bedroom.

Once the door had been partly bashed in,

the Miner couple came to open the door.

We saw a man at the door, standing in the hallway.

He was an old man.

Later we learned that he was Kepa Miner, the man of the house.

The first question we asked him was, "Who is here? Who is in the house?"

And immediately, his wife responded,

"There are two or three." "Where are they?"

They came into my parents' bedroom and took my father.

The Civil Guard was pointing a pistol at my father's head.

They put us in another room, our room.

Then it began, this was a fight like no other.

Then there was a serious shootout. It was all very bewildering.

We all got into position. We didn't know who was in the third bedroom.

One of the Civil Guards from the intelligence unit,

who was surely Commander Galindo's driver,

moved in and when he reached the third bedroom, they shot at him

and he was hit by four bullets.

He was wearing a bulletproof vest, and another got hit in the chest,

and one of them had his elbow shot up.

A colleague shot his way forward

and went into the back bedroom. We couldn't help him

because it was like a showdown, a brutal shootout.

One of the Civil Guards was shot. He was yelling,

"Stop shooting, you're the ones who wounded me."

LONG LIVE CG LOVO

Later we saw, he'd written in blood on the wall,

"Long live the Civil Guard, long live CG."

The children were in the second bedroom.

And the terrorists were in the third bedroom.

But of course, as you're moving from one bedroom to another...

The first wasn't a problem, nor was the second,

but when we reached the third, the door was shut.

As soon as we touched the door, they fired the first round of shots

from an assault weapon. These weren't pistol shots.

I think it's just your survival instinct that makes you scream.

We were three kids. We wanted to get out of there.

And, well, at one point, everything went silent.

I don't know if Commander Galindo or someone else

told the ETA guys not to shoot so that they could evacuate the children.

So, the children were evacuated,

and we moved into position.

The Civil Guards, well, one took me...

and the first thing he did is put a pistol to my head,

and his first question was to find out if Zabarte was in the house.

They didn't know whether he was there or not, or if there was a commando.

Then they asked me to sketch a map of the house.

Fermina, the lady of the house, told us,

"There's a hiding place behind the mirror."

And I seem to remember Amposta

picked up a three-legged stool, the kind you usually find in bedrooms,

and used it to break the glass.

"Who's there? Come out!"

And a man said, "Calm down, calm down, I'm coming out, it's fine."

"Drop your weapon! Drop your weapon!"

He wanted to ensure his hands were free

and then the man pulled out the revolver he was carrying, a Browning.

He came out naked.

To be honest, we didn't realize it was Zabarte Arregui.

I told him to lie down on the bed, and when he did,

I neutralized him. He kicked back a little,

and my colleague from our intelligence unit

stopped him from moving completely.

At some point, he said,

"Let me speak to them. I'll persuade them, they'll come out.

Turn yourselves in, we'll get out of jail.

There's no sense in letting them kill us here."

The others said, "You turn yourself in.

Leave us alone. Just drop it.

If they have any balls, let them come and get us."

It was an intense shootout that lasted three, maybe four hours.

We realized they'd never surrender.

Someone made a decision. I'm not sure who it was.

They understood that...

they had nothing more to gain.

And so what they did was,

they fired a grenade launcher from the building across the street

into the room where the two members of ETA were under siege.

The fire spread and as the temperature was really high,

all of the ammunition they had started to explode,

and it caused a raging fire.

The Civil Guard seemed inhuman to me. I couldn't understand it.

Why would he kick dead bodies on the ground?

And he celebrated with bottles of champagne,

with bottles of wine from the house.

They were celebrating as if having won a victory.

The Civil Guards took all of our jewelry, and my father's money,

they confiscated everything.

The arrest of Zabarte Arregui, the "Butcher of Mondragón,"

was an accomplishment

because, not only was he well-liked

within the organization, he was also a veteran,

he knew how they operated and he was going to talk to us.

ZABARTE ARREGUI, ONE OF THE MOST WANTED MEMBERS OF ETA, HAS BEEN CAPTURED

They brought me in to see Galindo

and release me, so to speak. They let me leave with my two brothers.

Interestingly enough...

...one of those boys, Imanol Miner...

CIVIL GUARD LIEUTENANT GENERAL

...joined an ETA commando years later.

He participated in the assassination of a policeman in Hernani.

He was arrested in 2002 by the Civil Guard.

I'm just telling you what I experienced.

I'll let everyone draw their own conclusions. That's all I can say.

We have to say that the Butcher told us...

ZABARTE ARREGUI IMPLICATED IN TWELVE POLICE OFFICER ASSASSINATIONS

...all about the commando infrastructure, including collaborators,

the weapons they had, and how they worked.

We got much more out of it...

...than just the Butcher's arrest.

We started to learn...

CIVIL GUARD COLONEL

...how the deadliest ETA commandos work.

We found out about all of the commando's weapons,

and from there, he also told us how they lived

and how they were structured in France.

With that, we started to think

that if we want to eradicate ETA,

if ETA is a terrorist group that kills in Spain but lives in France,

we should focus on France.

1985 - 1986 NEGOTIATING IN THE MIDST OF VIOLENCE

The victim's sister, María, had been home enjoying a meal.

She lives on the street where the assassination took place.

She came running out to the crime scene,

and when she recognized the victim as her brother, she had a hysterical fit.

She started to scream, claiming that the crime was a mistake.

ENRIQUE MORENO ARGUILEA,

A COMMUNIST RETIREE, WAS ASSASSINATED BY ETA

She saw two suspicious young people moments before the shots were fired.

HE WAS MISTAKEN FOR A STATE POLICE OFFICER

The victim's brother showed up on Urrieta Street shortly after.

ETA's operations had been weakened.

And so they decided to become more extreme.

In other words, they'd carry out less attacks,

but attacks would be more violent.

That's when they started using car bombs.

They've been unable to determine what kind of explosive device was used,

as the explosion caused the vehicle to burst into flames.

We started to see a slight possibility there may be conversations

with the Spanish government,

and as such, ETA kicked off a string of strong attacks

with the objective of gaining what they describe as "accumulated strengths,"

which is nothing more than the accumulation of dead bodies

in order to force the Spanish government to sit down and negotiate with them.

During that campaign of violence, there were three serious attacks

against the Civil Guard in Spain's capital.

SEPTEMBER 9, 1985 PLAZA DE REPÚBLICA ARGENTINA, MADRID

16 CIVIL GUARDS WOUNDED AND ONE NORTH AMERICAN DEAD

APRIL 25 1986 - INTERSECTION OF JUAN BRAVO AND PRÍNCIPE DE VERGARA, MADRID

5 CIVIL GUARDS DEAD

JULY 14, 1986 PLAZA DE REPÚBLICA DOMINICANA, MADRID

12 CIVIL GUARDS DEAD

The man responsible for this new ETA strategy

of less frequent but stronger attacks

will eventually take over the military arm.

This man is Santiago Arróspide, "Santi Potros."

ETA's objective was to negotiate,

and although the government...

was also interested in negotiations, it had little faith.

ETA wanted to negotiate because they wanted a technical timeout.

I knew many leaders, some of whom have died...

JOURNALIST

...who were clearly in favor of negotiations,

not in the sense of all or nothing, but negotiations

they thought could act as a remedy.

When Felipe González's government came to power,

they warned that games are over.

This statement signals that from now on, let there be no doubt,

"The Civil Guard can count on the support and assurance of the State."

JOURNALIST

That's what they claim many interpreted to mean, "When it comes to getting them,

we have unlimited authority in action."

BETWEEN 1983 AND 1987

GAL (ANTI-TERRORIST LIBERATION GROUPS) KILLED 28 PEOPLE

When Felipe González's government took office, they focused

on converting Franco's army into a democratic army at lightning speed.

We've never been able to understand

how quickly the army was able to make that shift.

However, it seems not much attention was given

to cleaning up the mess under the State's carpet.

THE DIRTY WAR

In Bilbao, the military arm of ETA

kidnapped Pharmacy Army Captain Martín Barrios.

They issued a public statement.

In exchange for Martín Barrios,

they were asking for the release of several imprisoned members of ETA...

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR SECURITY (1986-1994)

...serving a sentence here in Spain.

On top of that, they also requested

a spot on television to read a statement

describing ETA's political-military situation to prisoners,

as well as a generous sum of money.

Clearly, this was blackmail.

We were assessing the situation, because we also didn't have much time,

and we had information

on where ETA's politico-military leader was living or hiding from us.

His name was Larrechea Goñi.

And so we decided to send a commando to France

to arrest Larrechea Goñi.

We weren't counting on collaboration from the French.

We urgently needed to save Martín Barrios, and we needed an exchange.

We sent out a Special Operations Group along with a national police inspector,

actually he was from the Superior corps, prior to the reform.

They were given instructions not to engage in any confrontation

in the event of a possible arrest, or French police intervention.

As bad luck would have it, an off-duty French police officer

on his way home the night they picked up Larrechea Goñi,

walked by the commando.

He asked them to stop, and as they'd been given orders to comply,

they didn't argue, and Larrechea Goñi was released.

The next morning,

Captain Martín Barrios was found dead with a gunshot wound behind his neck.

DEMOCRATIC MILITARY FORCES ASK FOR CITIZEN'S HELP

FOLLOWING ETA'S ASSASSINATION OF CAPTAIN MARTÍN

Much later, by chance,

I ran into Captain Martín Barrios' son

in a shopping mall. He came up to me, gave me a hug,

and said, "Listen, you did all you could to save my father.

But it just happened."

At some point in the '80s, we had counted almost 100 victims.

Our response was a little impetuous and unmeasured,

but it was also morally wrong and tactically weak,

because any way you look at it,

we were helping the terrorist group

by providing them with justification to argue this was a conflict.

There had been some unconventional measures.

It took us three or four years to put an end to it.

PRIME MINISTER OF SPAIN (1982-1996)

That wasn't our initial intent.

It had started out...

WIFE OF FORMER ETA LEADER, JUAN JOSÉ ETXABE, ASSASSINATED

...as a Franco government response

to what they felt was highly offensive, the attack against Carrero.

AFTER FRANCO'S DEATH EXTREME RIGHT GROUPS

KILLED AT LEAST 40 PEOPLE

When I say there had not been any State terrorism,

I want citizens watching this to understand that,

when there is State terrorism...

State violence...

is much more forceful than terrorist violence.

Or, to put it in very simple terms,

when they declare a State terrorist war,

it's a force of at least 20 to 1, it's not one to one.

This is obvious when you look at what happened in Argentina or Chile.

The '80s were known as the "GAL decade."

This movement was...

CONDEMNED FOR COLLABORATION WITH ETA

...without a doubt,

the result of the rising popularity of Socialist party leaders,

led by Felipe González.

They were responsible for numerous assassinations in Iparralde,

as well as the relentless persecution of refugees,

in addition, many other people died

even though they had nothing to do with the organization.

I have to reiterate, once again,

that never in my professional or my private life...

INTERIOR MINISTER (1982-1988)

...have I ever ordered, authorized or consented to any illegal act.

In politics, and especially after so many years in a ministry like the Interior,

with so many difficult responsibilities,

you're bound to make mistakes, it's inevitable.

But above all, it's the colleagues you surround yourself with

that cause you to stumble.

If you don't select the best people, the most loyal,

and those who see things as you do,

well, in the end, that's just asking for trouble.

In Segundo Marey's case,

it's just common sense, we all know what happened.

SEGUNDO MAREY, A FRANCO-SPANISH BUSINESSMAN,

WAS KIDNAPPED BY GAL IN FRANCE

THEY RELEASED HIM IN A DEPLORABLE STATE

AFTER DISCOVERING HE WASN'T LINKED TO ETA

I'd rather not comment or mention any names,

but the truth is Segundo Marey's detention was a mistake,

an error, they botched it up.

And the few who went to prison, "prison" if I can call it that,

weren't detained long. This is actually what happened.

THE LAST VICTIM OF GAL

WAS A YOUNG MAN WHO'D FLED TO FRANCE TO AVOID MILITARY SERVICE

JUAN CARLOS GARCÍA GOENA, FROM TOLOSA, LATEST VICTIM OF GAL

The charges are described in the report presented to the judge.

Now it's up to the appropriate judicial bodies to decide.

RAFAEL VERA AND MINISTER BARRIONUEVO

WERE FOUND GUILTY OF KIDNAPPING SEGUNDO MAREY

AZNAR'S GOVERNMENT PARDONED THEM BOTH

There were fractures within the ETA organization over the course of the trial.

A few dissidents paid the price.

Scores were settled.

In some cases, these things were handled in particularly bold, dramatic ways.

1986 - THE ASSASSINATION OF YOYES

Yoyes thought that ETA had slipped into pure activism,

it was no longer concentrating on theory or politics.

On the other hand, she felt the organization...

JOURNALIST AND FRIEND OF YOYES

...needed to be open to negotiation.

And this is what caused a widening rift with her colleagues.

Surely as part of all that, there was also the fact that she was a woman,

and the first woman to become one of the leaders of ETA.

She never renounced her political objectives.

And the thought of causing...

JOURNALIST

...so much pain to others made her miserable.

She went through a serious crisis, with episodes of physical pain,

the kind that depression and disgust can cause.

When a prospect opened up for her to go to Mexico,

that's what enabled her to overcome her crisis and depression.

Then she started to focus on the next chapter.

I think that seeing so much horror drained her.

Her son was probably a factor of consideration in her decision.

And clearly, we have to consider that for her,

it was also a need to embrace life,

after having been surrounded by death for so many years. It was life.

She decided to return to Spain,

and moved to San Sebastián to live a normal life...

AN ETA MEMBER RETURNS HOME

...with her husband and son.

I remember I was speaking to Iñaki Esnaola...

"YOYES" RECEIVED DEATH THREATS FROM FORMER ETA COLLEAGUES

...the head of the Herri Batasuna coalition,

and I said, "Listen, Iñaki, we know that Yoyes is in Ordizia."

And he said, "What are you talking about?

What she did is as bad as a general abandoning his army."

YOYES - TRAITOR - RAT - DEPLORABLE

The man responsible for the military unit at that time,

Francisco Mujika Garmendia, "Pakito,"

gave the order of assassination.

And three or four days later,

we had to deliver the news

that they had shot her down in the town square

during a festival, in front of her son.

FOR DARING TO DISAGREE AND MAKING USE OF HER FREEDOM

ETA never forgave Yoyes for being a conscientious,

rational woman,

in charge of her destiny and who also wanted control of her life.

Kubati, the leader of the Donosti commando at that time, killed her.

ETA couldn't let this stand as an example, for other individuals

to think they could just decide to leave.

They needed tight control over these things.

It was a warning to the rest, and never again did anyone dare leave

without the group's permission.

That assassination...

It still haunts me a little to this day.

Maybe if that news hadn't gotten out,

maybe they wouldn't have killed Yoyes.

They created that myth, they clung to it...

But myths die out.

1986 - OPERATION SOKOA

That very same commando, the Donosti commando,

carried out another attack

to assassinate the military governor of Guipúzcoa, General Garrido.

They'd been studying the Guipúzcoa military governor's movements and routes.

They were monitoring his itinerary,

and they didn't have any scruples at all,

knowing they were about to kill the general's wife and son.

They thought of making what they call a "hollow charge."

CIVIL GUARD GENERAL

It's really a pan onto which they mount a cone-shaped explosive.

They used magnets to affix it to the top of the car,

so that when it exploded, the full burst of fire,

the full blast of the explosion, was directed inside the vehicle.

BRUTAL ATTACK AGAINST THE MILITARY GOVERNOR OF GUIPÚZCOA

There was such an avalanche of attacks that...

ANOTHER TERRORIST ATTACK

The political reflex was to respond directly...

BLOODY ATTACK BY ETA IN THE MIDDLE OF MADRID

...with arrests, but that didn't solve anything.

We'd abandon investigations that could potentially lead to great results,

and we were picking up foot soldiers, while never getting to the top.

We managed to convince our intelligence services that we needed

a change in strategy.

We tried to find new ways

of getting into the heart of ETA.

We received intelligence

that ETA wanted to launch a missile targeting the king and the prime minister.

KING OF SPAIN (1975-2014)

We thought it could be a good idea

to sell them a missile, as well as, obviously, a missile launcher.

We didn't have any way of finding them, nor did we have the technology

to attach some kind of location device to our missile launcher

that could lead us to them,

and so we decided to ask for help.

Who could we ask? The best suited to lend us what we needed

was the American intelligence services, the CIA.

They installed a location tracking device inside the missile launcher,

so that it could lead us to ETA's arsenal of weapons.

Once we had obtained a missile launcher and negotiated a deal,

we'd solved an important problem, the first part of the operation.

Now came the second part,

which was to find a way of delivering...

...those missile launchers to the ETA terrorist organization...

SECRETARY OF STATE FOR SECURITY (1984-1986)

...without raising any suspicion, because that could ruin plans.

The devices emitted a radio signal that would enable us...

CIVIL GUARD LIEUTENANT COLONEL

...with the use of sensitive receivers, to start tracking their location.

We reached out to Francisco Paesa...

FRANCISCO PAESA COLLABORATED WITH SPANISH SECRET SERVICES

...who had a contact in Geneva for illegal arms selling.

He said he was willing to help and in addition, he could provide us

with a contact in ETA's Iparretarrak unit.

Iparretarrak was a French organization

claiming to support the Basque Country's independence.

THE LEADER OF "IPARRETARRAK" RELEASED FROM JAIL IN FRANCE

Once they had agreed on terms of delivery

on Cuesta de Aldapeta Street, in San Sebastián,

they handed over the deactivated Stingers, they weren't loaded,

and that's how it was done.

What was our challenge?

We had 45 days of battery life, that's all.

We had to complete the operation within 45 days,

otherwise we wouldn't be able to follow the signal.

We were scouring the entire province

with cars and helicopters that had been provided by the Civil Guard

to support the operation,

but there was a lot of uncertainty because we weren't getting any signal.

Forty days had passed since the system had been activated.

An agent driving one of our cars

sent out a heads-up and we all gathered around

to find the signal source.

We determined that it had to come from a zone

located between the border of France and Spain.

We applied principles in trigonometry, everything pointed to one location.

The problem was that we couldn't go into France

because we were operating alone,

without the collaboration of French police.

In those days,

French cooperation wasn't exactly very useful or extensive.

Our boss arranged a meeting with French police

and managed to obtain their authorization to bring in one of our vehicles.

The signal kept bouncing off,

but as we got closer to what used to be a furniture manufacturing facility, Sokoa,

the signal became much stronger and clearer. It was leading us there.

Up until that point, we had no idea

of the magnitude of what we might find.

In fact, one of the well-known workers of that company was Segundo Marey.

Yes, the infamous Segundo Marey,

and obviously, he had nothing to do with Sokoa.

Practically everything's already been said about GAL.

Personally, I've said everything I had to say about GAL in court,

in many court appearances, and it had been repeated many times.

The next day, when the French police conducted their search,

they didn't find anything at all, nothing.

When we insisted,

they authorized us to send in one of our agents with a receiver.

At first, as soon as he walked in, the signal pointed to a wall.

But it was a wall, and so the signal was obviously bouncing off the surface.

He continued his search to the back, and went through the entire building,

covering every corner of the manufacturing plant,

and of course, the signal always brought him back to the entrance.

The French police were saying there was nothing there.

We asked them to remove the shelving unit that was covering the wall.

It was empty, but there were shelves covering the wall.

When they removed the shelving unit,

they discovered a hidden entrance in the wall,

it was very well done.

My colleague went in

and he was able to confirm that's where the signal was coming from.

In addition to the missile launchers,

of course, they found a large quantity

of documents, weapons, a significant sum of money...

Then we had to recover

the location device to return it to the Americans,

as well as remove the explosives from the missiles,

the disabled ammunition, and put in real ammunition

so that later, when French bomb experts examined the materials,

they'd confirm that the explosives were real,

because if they weren't, then the severity of the crime

attributed to ETA wouldn't be as serious, right?

"They bought disabled missiles. They're completely worthless."

TO SPAIN'S CIVIL GUARD IN MEMORY OF OUR COLLABORATION

SOKOA - NOVEMBER 1986 IN ADMIRATION AND FRIENDSHIP

HEAD OF OPERATIONS FRENCH INTELLIGENCE SERVICES

It was the first time we'd ever seen such important papers.

All Sokoa employees back then were members of ETA, all of them.

Things have changed a lot since those days,

but at the time, they hired

all of the military refugees, as they used to call them.

ENTRANCE SOKOA

Sokoa marks the beginning

of the intelligence war against ETA in France.

We start to uncover what they call the "revolutionary tax," which was

economic extortion and blackmail to fund ETA's activities.

All big companies in the Basque Country received letters of extortion,

as well as famous people, soccer players, great Basque chefs.

Anyone with money was a target for extortion.

1 MILLION PESETAS

The letter format sent out by ETA

opened with a person's full name, or the name of the company,

followed by their demand.

As members of the oligarchy,

businessmen or rich people benefitting from the Basque working class,

they had an obligation to contribute to the liberation of the Basque Country.

If you alert the police, or if your contribution is delayed in any way,

you will be executed irrespective of your location,

even outside of Europe.

In Sokoa, they uncovered the first ETA manuals on explosives.

LETTER BOMB

These manuals were still rudimentary,

but would become more sophisticated over the years.

PLACEMENT PATHS

They also found what they called "files,"

outlining potential attack targets.

I'm an ETA informer, I live on the fourth floor

and there's a Civil Guard who lives on the fifth floor.

I send very detailed information to ETA.

The input ETA received was more or less extensive.

It was useful to the commando who would later

be sent this information to go and kill the target.

THE BLOW TO SOKOA WEAKENS ETA

BUT IT EMBOLDENS THEM TO BECOME EVEN MORE DANGEROUS AND BLOODTHIRSTY

1987 - THE HIPERCOR ATTACK

ETA wanted to terrorize.

It wanted to act as the protagonist.

It set out to strike fear in people.

The incendiary explosive device in Hipercor wasn't standard.

They added things to it that had never been used before.

The main objective of using soap shavings wasn't clear,

except that they enhanced adherence to people's bodies

and produced an explosion that was really lethal.

Their objective couldn't be anything other

than to inflict additional pain, intensify cruelty,

and to prevent victims from escaping.

They mastered the technique.

They can't profess they didn't know what was going to happen.

There were some mistakes. Not many, but some, I mean...

I want to be clear. This wasn't the objective of the organization.

It wasn't the objective.

Some people died,

and they died... just because that's the way things played out.

I worked as a butcher at Hipercor.

I remember the day of the attack was a Friday.

You never expect as you're doing your job as a butcher...

HIPERCOR EMPLOYEE AND ATTACK VICTIM

...taking care of the clients, that suddenly your life would change.

I remember the song "Mediterráneo" by Serrat

was playing over the loudspeaker.

I was humming along as I was cutting pork loins for two ladies,

and at that moment, I heard the blast of an explosion.

Suddenly, I felt very hot. There were flames, I felt a lot of pain.

I had suffered burns, and there was a lot of screaming.

At that point, you just try and get out of there any way you can.

We were knocked against the counters. There were shards of glass, shelves

and all kinds of things.

People started to scream. We started running.

There was a child's stroller turned over, face down, destroyed.

I was lucky enough to be able to walk out of there.

In fact, in speaking with firemen some time later,

when they told me the temperature was between 4,500 and 5,000 degrees,

I realized that if I hadn't managed to get out, I wouldn't have survived.

My parents died when I was seven years old.

Based on what I was told,

my parents had just gone to do their usual weekend grocery shopping.

The only memory I have is seeing everyone dressed in black...

SON OF VICTIMS OF ETA

...at my grandmother's house, and everyone was crying.

I still feel sad, that's why I'm choking up a little.

It's painful for me because I still remember to this day

that they had just killed my parents and all I wanted to do was play soccer.

I was seven. Friends and people say,

"You were a kid, it doesn't mean anything," but it hurts me.

The explosion burned all of my face, my entire head,

my hands, my arms, my right leg...

I also had pieces of shrapnel from the car bomb blast.

I have physical after-effects, the burns

obviously resulted in a loss of muscle strength,

and logically, loss of arm strength.

I was 24 at the time of the attack.

I was spoiling for a fight. I really wanted to fight

and to stand up for my rights, you know?

I've been lucky to be able to channel that into helping other victims,

and into helping other people.

Maybe that's what saved me.

When I was 14, I shifted my way of thinking.

From that point on,

I started to realize that my parents would never be by my side.

I finished school, later I went to university.

I graduated, my parents didn't see any of that.

I got married, and my parents missed that, too.

When my daughter was born,

the first thing I did after leaving the hospital

was to go to the cemetery to introduce my daughter to them.

I stayed there a while holding my daughter in my arms.

She must have been two or three days old,

and I started to cry as I have never cried ever in my life, up until then.

I had my daughter with me, close to me, so tiny,

as I was standing in front of my parents' niche,

crying, simply because I needed to cry. My parents were gone,

and that was the worst day of my life, since they died,

almost 28, 29 years earlier.

Mistake.

It was a risk, there's no doubt about that.

There were a lot of warnings.

I know that doesn't justify anything, I know that.

I plant a bomb in a building that can kill one,

50 or 1,000 people who were there shopping.

And I forgive myself and think I'm going to heaven because I warned people?

They told me my mother was pregnant.

As far as I'm concerned, ETA didn't just kill my mother and father,

ETA killed my mother, my father and my brother.

ETA BOMB KILLS 15 AND WOUNDS 35 IN ONE OF BARCELONA'S LARGEST SHOPPING CENTERS

For many, ETA was finally showing its true colors.

There was no shortage of people

before the incident who believed ETA had limits.

As we discovered, they didn't.

Mr. Prime Minister, can you share how you felt

when you found out about this serious attack?

When there's an incident of that nature,

you're always enraged by what's happened,

and these are emotions you have to control

because you need to keep a cool head in the fight against terrorism.

I was in Brazil. I came home immediately,

and when I met the family at the funeral...

A PAINFUL AND EMOTIONAL GOODBYE

...I was trying to project emotional strength

to those who committed such horrors.

I didn't want them to think they were breaking me down.

ETA's strategy had always been to build up more pressure,

and the only way they knew how to do that was to kill people.

Because they knew that was terrifying.

Were there instances that were particularly painful to me? Yes.

But the attack that really broke my heart was the Hipercor incident in Barcelona.

That was devastating to me.

1987 - SANTI POTROS' ARREST

Santi Potros was the illegal commandos' ringleader.

He planned out the type of attacks

and was responsible for commando assignments.

He was legendary.

The commandos we had arrested,

the Butcher of Mondragón and others,

had told us about their boss, Santi Potros.

He ordered the Barcelona commando to conduct the shopping center attack.

SANTIAGO ARROSPIDE "SANTI POTROS" GUILTY OF 40 MURDERS

When Santi Potros took over as leader of the activists known to police,

we began to see higher levels of aggressivity and damage.

They started making new weapons, such as "jotakes," and kamikaze cars.

They also started planting traps.

After an attack there would often be another explosion

triggered by our arrival on-scene.

They'd bury another explosive charge,

for example, beside the dead body or the assassinated victim

who'd been shot in the head.

The French police received information,

probably from some neighbor close to the family harboring Santi Potros,

the Guimon family. It's a tip that somebody is hiding there.

French armed police noticed in Anglet unusual activity around a residence.

Initially, they didn't suspect it was a member of ETA.

They thought it was perhaps some collaborator

working with the French terrorist group Iparretarrak.

THE PEOPLE NEED IT

When they went in, the family was there.

The family attempted to throw off French police.

They continued to search the house.

As one of the officers walked by a girl who lived there,

she said, "You've already searched this room.

And that obviously caught their attention.

They went into the room and found Santi Potros under the bed, holding a pistol.

They never imagined they were arresting an ETA leader,

and he was a good catch. Well, good and bad.

When they realized who he was, they discovered

a pile of papers under the bed.

They learned that each commando, the Donosti commando, the Madrid commando,

the Barcelona commando, the Vizcaya commando,

all had been given objectives. There were commando letters...

Later, Santi Potros

would be severely criticized internally for being so careless.

From that moment on, ETA issued an order

to destroy all documents after they've been read.

These documents were really useful to us for other commando arrests...

FRANCE STRIKES A HARD BLOW INTO THE HEART OF ETA

...and preventive measures to dismantle operations as soon as possible.

The Santi Potros operation is the first time

the flow of information between France and Spain proves to be effective.

In collaboration, we're all more efficient.

1987 - OPERATION AKAITZ

As a result of the "Yoyes" assassination,

the Civil Guard launched an operation known as Operation Akaitz,

in the name of her son, who was there when she was killed.

This operation would target the dismantlement of the Goyerri commando.

The Civil Guard was now more confident. They knew how to work.

From that point on, they started getting leads.

They managed to track down the man

who would become the next most notorious assassin of Guipúzcoa,

the man who killed the military governor of Guipúzcoa,

the man who killed "Yoyes," Kubati.

On top of that, he was a key person because he was a leader...

FORGED DOCUMENTATION

...and was well-respected within the organization.

Starting in 1984,

and even more so as of '86, Kubati became much more active.

He was especially involved in larger attacks

and always used booby-traps.

DOCUMENTATION SEIZED FROM SANTI POTROS

WAS KEY TO LOCATING KUBATI

It all played out like a movie.

We knew one of his collaborators was expecting a call from Kubati,

and we knew at what time.

TELEPHONE

We knew that Kubati, both for security reasons

and to keep a low-profile, would have to make the call from a public telephone.

We also knew he was in Guipúzcoa.

There were over 1,000 public telephone booths.

It would be impossible to keep an eye on all of them.

PROVINCE OF GUIPÚZCOA

We narrowed it down by zone, basically,

zeroing in on the Goyerri commando's area of activity, and within that area,

we chose locations where Kubati would be most likely to go.

We set up teams, they were monitoring about 600 booths.

From there, at the designated time, we listened in to our wiretap.

When we got the call to say that Kubati was speaking to his collaborator,

we issued an order to all our units

to arrest anyone in a telephone booth at that time.

There were maybe 70 or 80 people

who had the unfortunate luck of being in a booth at that very moment.

Where did he pop up? Where we expected to find him,

that is, in Tolosa.

We grabbed him, pushed him to the ground to immobilize him,

and we found he was carrying a pistol that he had very well concealed.

At first, he said, "No, I'm a police officer."

JOSÉ ANTONIO LÓPEZ RUIZ "KUBATI" WAS FOUND GUILTY OF 13 MURDERS

OPERATION AKAITZ COMMANDO GOIHERRI-COSTA

Kubati was a cold man with a lot of power,

and he was especially cruel.

They thought...

THE GOVERNMENT BELIEVES THEY'VE DISMANTLED THE ETA GUIPÚZCOA CELL

...that his arrest, for ETA, would be something

to bring it close to a breaking point.

But no, we were proven wrong.

ONE MONTH LATER, AN ETA ATTACK

KILLS THE HIGHEST NUMBER OF CHILDREN IN THE ORGANIZATION'S HISTORY

BETWEEN 1983 AND 1987 ETA KILLS 205 PEOPLE

SERIES BASED ON THE BOOK "HISTORIA DE UN DESAFÍO:

CINCO DÉCADAS DE LA LUCHA SIN CUARTEL DE LA GUARDIA CIVIL CONTRA ETA"

WRITTEN BY MANUEL SÁNCHEZ CORBÍ AND MANUELA SIMÓN