“What’s wrong with you?” ‘I must not sign anything.’ ‘According to the Government decree, in order to be able to collect the salary, the document must be signed by any person of military age. You too’. "No, sir!" I must not sign! You don’t know who I am!’ I looked at her face and I didn't recognize her. ‘Look, think calmly. Sign and we will give you money.’ "No, sir!" I will not! And I know you very well!’, and he looked at me with this. I thought I knew about Hernani. I know you very well! And I know your whole life! You have been a prisoner for many years! I talk to Manzanas every day and I report everything you do!’ Then I was scared...”

With Marcelo Usabiaga (Ordizia, 1916) at the head of the Personnel Department of the Orbegozo hardware store of Hernani, it has been almost half a century since this interview with Demetrio Lesmes (Sotoserrano, 1920 - Hernani, 1975). It was around 1965 and then some questions emerged for our protagonist, some doubts, which in recent years have been spinning in the head. Let's go back in time looking for the key to the mystery.

Meliton Manzanas (Donostia-San Sebastián, 1909-Irún, 1968) was a police inspector in Irun until he was appointed head of the Social Policy Brigade of Gipuzkoa. He became famous for his toughness and his reputation as a relentless torturer. Trade unionists, members of the PSOE and the PCE, Basque nationalists... There were eleven citizens who went through their consultations in the police stations of Donostia and Irun. She was a close partner of the Franco civil governor and leader of the repression against anti-Francoism.

In late 1944, Manzanas learned that a group of guerrillas embarked in the South after passing through the Bidasoa, when a soldier intercepted a loader of machine guns on the mountain. A few days later, Manzanas himself arrested Usabiaga on a floor of Donostia-San Sebastián, where he was arrested by court order. Our protagonist was a member of the maci-group consisting of ten men and a woman, and that was when the police discovered that he was a Republican prisoner sentenced to 30 years and fleeing to the North.

Torture in the hands of Manzanas

Usabiaga was transferred to the Irun police station: “Apples introduced me into a room: ‘Go ahead, shitty bump’, and threaten: ‘Well, you’ll have to pay everyone!’ Said and done. After being stabbed in the stomach, taking off his shoes and forcing him to stand on the wall, Apples jumped on Usabiaga's feet several times. “I saw them red. The greatest fear I've ever had in my life was that night...”

Indeed, at two in the morning, after passing through his hands, with his hands tied and on both sides a police officer, Manzanas brought Marcelo to the street. “You know where this is! And if you move, the wood will fall, huh? No fear.” "That phrase won't forget me, I thought they were going to fuse me. I started thinking about how to escape.” But fortunately, he was eventually taken to another police station that Usabiaga didn't know. The result of the arrests was terrible: The guerrilla commander Pedro Barroso was sentenced to death and executed in Vitoria-Gasteiz. The remainder was sentenced to 20 years ' imprisonment for a crime of murder.

The Ordiziarra paid his punishment perfectly; more than it did: He was 21 years old in several prisons in the Spanish State and finally, in June 1960, he achieved freedom.

After going through jail, he started working at the Orbegozo factory. However, Manzanas, even after two decades, did not leave Usabiaga alone, who forced him to visit the Donostia-San Sebastian Civil Government every Sunday in the Armed Police building. There, ten and a half to two in the morning, Marcelo sat in a chair. “The cops who were walking around didn’t hit me, but they told me about everything: the son of a whore, the ‘red’… That made me pass to me and two.”

Manzanas-Lesmes connection

Although it may seem like a lie, this last event is closely related to the case of Demetrio Lesmes, as on Sundays, at the police station, Meliton Manzanas stayed next to Usabiaga talking to him for a long time: “Then I realized that I knew a lot about myself, I told myself in detail many of the things I did at the factory all week long, for example, meetings with the director or lawyer, judgments in the working magistrature... How the hell will this know?’ It caused me tremendous curiosity, but I didn’t give it more importance, because knowing what I was doing was legal.” Finally, consulted with the company's lawyer, he decided not to go to the police station on Sundays: “I’m making a fool to see what happens!” Thus, facing the order of Manzanas, because by law it was not mandatory for the speakers to come to the police station every Sunday. However, Marcelo expected a harsh persecution by Manzanas, which remained at the gates of Santiago.

But, to her surprise, she left her alone. For a few years he had no news of the police chief until Demetrio Lesmes appeared in his life. The 96-year-old communist remembers that the tense conversation he had with him was initiated by Lesmes himself. “I didn’t know. Because among five hundred workers was another. Nothing else. In addition, he told me, without me asking him: ‘I talk to Apples every day.’ And he took a role. ‘I am part of Franco’s guard!’ Imagine how I was left... Staggered.”

The event has been recorded for decades in Usabiaga's memory, until recently it was told to this journalist. “Since then, I didn’t want to know more about the issue. I didn't make that public either, I didn't ask anyone, I didn't turn to the subject again. Knowing who he was! I thought it would make my life impossible. Imagine that he had been out of jail for a few years,” Usabiaga said. However, they did not leave him alone and he was controlled and spied throughout the Franco regime. Marcelo perfectly remembered going to the police station for a suspicious interrogation, while doing his daily life: “What have you returned from Pamplona by car? What have you done there?’ they asked me several times. I knew they were following me.”

Three years after the interview with Lesmes, on 2 August 1968, ETA murdered Meliton Manzanas in Irun, the first political assassination that was prepared and organized in its history. Seven years later, on 8 August 1975, ETA murdered Demetrio Lesmes in Hernani, shot when he was on his way from the factory to his home.

Launching real details

Half a century after what happened, Usabiaga discovers the details of the history of our people. However, his desire is not to raise controversy, nor to think that events have to do with him: “I don’t want anyone to link me to what ETA has done. Make it clear, that’s why I’ve always had the reluctance to tell,” he said firmly.

Fighting for memory, her goal is for society to know what has happened to her, to make known the dark inconveniences of history and the whole truth. And it is that, as the writer Fred Berence said, “although the small story is molded by some modern theories, it does not stop intervening in the great story and, often, the concrete”.