In these times when the word ETA has been so exposed, so bandied about in political debates by one and the other, it becomes convenient to stop and distinguish the voices from the echoes.
Precisely, the word of Ferran Cardenal is one for which you have to stop and listen, because he was a senior person responsible for the fight in Catalonia against the Basque terrorist band. He was in charge of the Civil Government of Barcelona between 1982 and 1993. He went to many funerals.
Cardinal has written a book, ETA against Catalonia. Crónica y memoria, among other reasons because it wants to prevent forgetting. "We wanted to keep the pain caused by ETA in a corner of the memory". His statement is resounding, while keeping his distance from any current political controversy.
He suggests that recovering in a work, written astride the "chronicle and the memory", what those years of public life were in a position like his was more a duty of that now non-existent institution than the new ones generations may not even know it existed.
"Those of us who have directly experienced some of those events have the obligation to explain what happened and write it down so that it is not forgotten, so that the page cannot be turned, so that the memory of what happened and the solidarity with the victims", says Cardenal in conversation with La Vanguardia.
The Etara activity in Catalonia is the one he is most familiar with, although not exclusively, because, not surprisingly, he was director general of the Civil Guard just after leaving his position as civil governor in Barcelona. He was head of the armed institute between 1993 and 1996.
In his book, he offers a lot of data, including the following figures for ETA's activity in Catalonia. The terrorist gang killed 54 people in this community (34 ordinary citizens and 20 members of the State security bodies and forces or the military). The total number of injured amounted to 224. All these murders and personal injuries were committed in the 74 attacks recorded in Catalan lands, which took place between May 1975 and August 2001, when the last action of the criminal gang in Catalonia, in a hotel in Salou. The frequent attacks on Catalan tourist interests were a constant throughout the period that the terrorist gang maintained its criminal activity.
The first fatality in Catalan territory was that of national police officer Ovidio Díaz López, who died when he confronted members of a commando who were robbing a bank branch. It happened in Barcelona in June 1975. The last fatal victim of the massacres was a police officer, Santos Santamaría Avendaño, who died as a result of a bomb explosion in the Girona town of Roses.
Beyond the people directly affected, those who have experienced tragedies, such as being widowed, orphaned, amputation of limbs or other atrocities, there are other more "diffuse" victims who are never talked about, in whose opinion it was civil governor of Barcelona. It refers to people who had to change their usual way of life, public servants who were forced to live much of their existence with an escort, children of members of the State security forces or military personnel who crossed states of anxiety and fear for fear of losing father or mother to the constant threat of ETA gunmen.
Cardenal is no stranger to the fact that certain instances have made a deliberate change of discourse regarding the terrorist band and "the enormous harm it caused", in an attempt to change the memory. "This is particularly clear and evident in the Basque Country. I think that in the rest of Spain there is no such situation". According to his analysis, these modifications of the past are not made outside Euskadi, but the search for oblivion is, which is precisely what Cardinal is fighting against and the reason why he decided to write the book.
This senior official in matters of the interior in Catalonia in the 1980s and 1990s focuses in particular on the two bloodiest ETA attacks in this community: that of Hipercor (1987) and that of the Guard barracks Civil of Vic (1991).
And within this exercise of keeping memory alive, he clarifies, in case anyone has forgotten, that there were numerous citizens of Catalonia who helped, collaborated and even formed part of the terrorist band of the ax and the snake. "We don't like to think that ETA was not just a problem for the Basques", he says.
