- On Saturday, 30 July, the City of Donostia-San Sebastian will place a commemorative plaque by Mikel Zabascene Garate (1952-1985), opposite the Intxaurrondo Civil Guard headquarters (c/ Baratzategi, 35). Zabascene was arrested by the Civil Guard at his home in Altza in 1985, today. He was brutally tortured and killed at the barracks, and his body appeared twenty days later in the area of Endarlatsa (Navarra) on the Bidasoa River.
The act of placing the plate will take place at 12:00 hours and, as explained by the Consistory, “as has been done with other plate placement acts, a small tribute will be paid. It will be attended by the Mayor of Donostia, Eneko Goia, representatives of the municipal groups and family members of the victims.” With this, it will be 32 the plates placed by the City Hall to “recover the memory and make visible in the public space the people who lost their lives due to terrorism and politically based violence”. The project was launched two legislatures ago.
Natural from Orbaizeta (Navarra), Zabraises lived in Altza, and was a driver of the San Sebastian Tramway Company and affiliated with the ELA trade union. During his arrest, his partner, Idoia Aierbe, his cousin Manuel Bizkai, two of his brothers, Patxi and Aitor, and the writer Ion Arretxe, one of the detainees, were also arrested. Aierbe and Arretxe were also tortured. Last Saturday, Zabraise was honored at Mikel’s Txoko.
Recognised as a victim
After many years of fighting between relatives of Zabascene, the Basque Government recognised Zabascene as a victim in 2022, and the Government of Navarra also did so in May of this year. It is therefore a further step in the case report of the Orbaizeta board to be set up by the City Council.
The Government of Spain, for its part, maintains the official version which it established almost 40 years ago and which when they led it to check a ETA juice, fled and drowned in the Bidasoa. However, this version has been denied on more than one occasion by Forensic Pako Etxeberria, and in 2021 the recording of a conversation was published between the captain of Civil Guard Luis Alberto Perote, colonel of CESID (Centre Superior de Información de la Defensa) and the head of Intxaurrondo’s headquarters, Enrique Rodríguez Galindo. “They’ve gone by their hands, they’ve stayed in the interrogation,” said Gómez Nieto.
On the other hand, the documents of the Zabraise case remain classified despite the fact that the Spanish Government’s President, Pedro Sánchez, was willing to declassify in 2022. Nor must we forget that last year the Spanish Government increased the level of civil guard linked to the Arturo Espejo case, promoted by the ministers Margarita Robles and Fernando Grande-Marlaska.