In the early morning of 6 September 2001, the Civil Guard arrested the young Unai Romano in Vitoria-Gasteiz. He was taken to a police station in Madrid where he was tortured one day. Constant blows on the head, placing electrodes on the testicles, penis and ears, and using systems such as "elevator" and "bag", among others. The next day he was taken to the hospital. Shortly thereafter, he was made available to the judge of the National Court who was in charge of the custody of Unai Romano during his detention. Half a minute, Fernando Markasla interrupted his conversation and told Judge Guillermo Ruiz Polanco that he was looking at the deformed face shown in the photo: "I have been working with the Civil Guard for many years, and I have heard a lot of people say that they have suffered a lot of torture and ill-treatment," he added. In short, he does not believe in the allegations of torture and he sends them to prison. He sent Unai Romano to jail and his swollen face became the symbol of torture in the Basque Country.

Ten years later, in the well-known case of bilbain Beatriz Etxeberria, Fernando Marlaska repeated in another well-known case the same modus operandi as the judges of the National Court. In police station, Etxeberria reported being raped by municipal police officers. In fact, at the Madrid Emergency Court, Marlaska was not useless in representing a great friend of the torturers: Baltasar Garzón, disguised today as “human rights defenders” around the world.

These are the cases he has had over these years with Senator Alberto and Jon Iñarritu:

Grande Marlaska continued to pursue a political career. During his time at the National Hearing (2004-2013), he was an instructor judge in six of the nine cases that Strasbourg imposed on Spain for not investigating allegations of torture. In 2013, the European Commission for the Prevention of Torture underlined in a report that it "surprised" that all detentions carried out in solitary confinement during the five months that were examined in 2011 "had been authorised by a judge who does not apply any kind of protection against torture." They referred to Fernando el Grande-Marlaska. In November 2013, he was appointed a member of the General Council of the Spanish Judiciary, on the proposal of the People’s Party. And in 2018, this time on a proposal from the PSOE, he was appointed Minister of the Interior of the Government of Spain. So far.

The Spanish Government has announced its intention to review these days the awards and medals granted by the Spanish "democracy" to the torturers of Franco. I should like to point out a few issues that can be taken into account during this debate.

On the one hand, the first official report of systematic torture, which has now reached three years, has had no effect on torturers. At the request of the Basque Government, the group led by Pako Etxeberria has unveiled the extreme of the iceberg: Between 1960 and 2014, more than four thousand tortured and tortured persons of various kinds have been practiced in the CAV. No one denies, not even Etxeberria, that that number is much larger. The last report by the Euskal Memoria group has confirmed a total of 5,657 breast cancer cases in the Basque Country. Of the total torture, 2,677 (47 per cent) have been carried out by the National Police, 2,348 (41 per cent) by the Civil Guard and 407 (7 per cent) by the Ertzaintza.

On the other hand, "if I put myself ten meters high, I throw him in the head and tell him that he escaped, they will decorate me." In the interviews, Unai Romano often speaks of what a civil guard has told him, which has been well kept in his memory. Most of the police officers who have been convicted in Euskal Herria for torture or state terrorism have been pardoned or awarded by the Spanish Government in turn. Torturator Manuel Sánchez Corbí, colonel of the Civil Guard, is a good example. After being convicted of torturing Kepa Urra in 1997, in 1999 he was pardoned by the Aznar Government and in September 2018, under the orders of Marlaska, he was decorated by the Ministry of the Interior.

And finally, it is no coincidence that this week in the Spanish Congress, when asked by EH Bildu about these issues, Marlaska ended up saying: "I would like to congratulate the Civil Guard, the National Police and the Mossos d'Escuadra for the work they did in October." He referred to the macro-beating given by the police to the Catalans in the days of the referendum. Along with Baltasar Garzón, one of the main defenders of torture in Spain, he is in charge of withdrawing and delivering medals to torturers. “Since the Second Republic, in a progressive coalition government that has never happened.”