The hugs and smiles of the nine travelers and their guide, who spent ten days trapped in Addis Zemen, in northeastern Ethiopia, mixed with the story of a true nightmare upon arrival at El Prat airport in Barcelona, yesterday afternoon. Faces of relief and exhaustion between words of horror. "There were times when we suffered for our lives," acknowledged Noelia Bertran, the person who accompanied them on the ground as a guide for Kananga, the Barcelona travel agency that organized the expedition. “It has been very hard,” added Núria Giménez, one of the tourists.
The group of eighteen Spaniards – the rest had landed hours earlier in Madrid and Valencia, including a 13-year-old girl – was surprised by a violent revolt by the Fano guerrilla, which was fighting the government in the Amhara region, on August 2. , and he was trapped in some kind of hostel that was in very bad conditions, without running water, fleas in the beds and sharing space with animals.
“We were near a gas station when some men armed with Kalashnikovs pointed at us,” Giménez said. “The first day we heard shots and a lot of noise. The next day, we saw dead. One night we had to lock ourselves in a dark room for an hour in silence. Nothing happened, but it was something very big”, Bertran recalled.
The guide added that every day they were delayed for a rescue that never came. "Tomorrow will be the day," they told us. The roads were cut and the communications were scarce. Even so, Bertran was able to maintain contact with the Spanish consul, Fernando Magallanes, three times a day. “He asked us to wait”, and “we had already been there for eight days”. Giménez, for his part, regretted the little response they have received from the Spanish ambassador in Ethiopia, Manuel Salazar Palma. "We can't have an honorary lord who isn't capable of getting some people out of a place," he said. "We did not receive a word from the ambassador, he was on vacation but he showed up when we arrived in Addis Ababa after the rescue," Bertran added.
The architect of the operation that took them out of there last Friday, aboard an Ethiopian army helicopter, a Russian-made Mi-171 Sh aircraft, is Daniel Abate, the manager of the Kuriftu luxury hotel in Bahir Dar, owned by of a certain Tadiwos, a hotel tycoon who lives in the United States and who is very well connected with the upper echelons of the African country, explained to this newspaper Miquel Ribas, Kananga's director of operations, who has traveled with him on occasion.
"African Union summits are organized in their hotels," Ribas said. It was Tadiwos' right-hand man, Daniel Abate, who alerted his military contact, General Abebaw Taddese, about the situation in which the Spanish travelers found themselves. Taddese, who is also the deputy chief of the Ethiopian General Staff, gave the final order for the helicopter rescue, Kananga has reported.
Ribas confirmed that no one had to pay for the ransom (it was paid for by the army, according to what Abate revealed to the journalist for this newspaper Xavier Aldekoa last week). His explanation: the matter was becoming publicized and no one in the place, a tourist region where there were also travelers of other nationalities trapped, wanted the situation to go on any longer. The helicopter took them from Addis Zemen to the city of Bahir Dar, and then to Addis Ababa, the capital, from where they flew to Barcelona on Monday with a stopover in Istanbul.
However, some of the relatives reject the version given by the agency and assure that the strings were pulled from the intelligence services of a country that is not Spain and that, as part of the negotiation, something was given in return to the guerrilla, Neus Giménez, Núria's sister, told this newspaper. Neus also criticized the slowness with which the agency acted. "If they had so many contacts, they could have been released earlier and avoided so much suffering," she lamented Neus, who could not give more details about who was behind the final deal.
The controversy over the country's danger warnings continued yesterday on the air. The acting Minister of Foreign Affairs, José Manuel Albares, insisted to the press in Congress that the Spanish Government had been advising against traveling to northern Ethiopia for “many months”. The Spanish embassy in the country already assured a few days ago that it warned on its website that it was unsafe to visit the region, but both the agency and tourists reject the version. "We consulted the information before leaving and it did not say anything," repeated Núria Giménez. The warnings were for the Tigré area, further north, they say from the agency, so that region was ruled out.
The Fano revolt, which means volunteer guerrillas, rose up against the Ethiopian army in early August, but the situation had been heated since April, when Prime Minister and Nobel Peace Prize winner Abiy Ahmed announced the integration of regional special forces in the army. The gesture felt very badly for the Fanos, who had fought side by side with the military against the Tigre People's Liberation Front (FLPT) during the war between 2020 and 2022. The rebels represent the discontent Amhara, an ethnic group (the 25% of Ethiopians) who feel neglected by the state.
Despite the controversy with the embassy and the "moments of high tension", Bertran wanted to highlight the strength of the group, which he defined as very cohesive, and thanked the people who welcomed them at the hostel. He regrets that what had to be a great adventure was cut short on the fourth day of starting and that his clients have missed out on getting to know a country that is "very beautiful". Still, he admitted that he doesn't think he'll work there again. "My family and partner would not allow it," said the guide, who is now heading to Finland, where she will spend the winter season and hopes to have time to digest everything she has experienced.
“No one is prepared to go through something like this. But my role as a guide is to be decisive and have a plan A, B and C. Every day I woke up thinking how we could get out of there, "said Bertran. And they went out.
