Jesus, Chuso, Naves, friend. You've gone, comrade, leaving us in this world, we fight together to transform ourselves into this world, and -- and, well, we've done what we've been able to.

Pronounce your name and I get two other words that are intimately linked to my palate: assembly, equality.

We were born in different villages, and our lives crossed in Vitoria-Gasteiz in 1975. When we arrived in the city, you flee from the Argentine dictatorship, I flee from other struggles of Euskal Herria, both of which were recently employed in Mercedes and Cable, after bypassing the black lists of businessmen. They were different times, neither better nor worse, but very different, and then friendship and relationship were established between us.

A vertical union, like the whole of society; without recognition of rights, be it assembly, organization or strike. We began to bring together a few workers from various factories in the underground, step by step, and there we met for the first time, friends. Sharing dreams and struggles, hiding or forgetting names, agreeing on the minimums we wanted to fuel deeper changes: a single work agreement for workers in the different branches of production, linear wage increases for all, participatory and transparent assemblies where no one is more than anyone, where representatives can be represented at all times.

Those dreams are forgotten. But we kept a source of pride. Despite the fact that the struggle was an economist in the initial demands, we put before and above all the achievements the return to work of all the dismissed and the freedom of all the detainees. Sweat and tears, and blood: Pedro María Ocio, Romualdo Barroso, Welcome Pereda, José Castillo and Francisco Aznarrena, and hundreds of wounded in the massacre.

We were arrested in the following days of the killings charged with sedition. We were included in the juvenile reform module of Carabanchel prison, isolated from the rest of the political prisoners, because the regime wanted to impose absolute silence on the Vitoria strikes. Remember, Jesus? There we lost contact with the street struggle, but we received a subject of intensive sociology from those who have been beaten from the crib. There we narrowed our relationship by sharing hours, days and months. A week of hunger strike in solidarity with the COPEL social prisoners suddenly freed us, in August 1976, because of the amnesty. At first we celebrated that amnesty; we soon cursed it with indignation: This armored the impunity of those who had been corrupt and criminal during the 40-year-old dictatorship. You fooled us!

We arrived in Vitoria in a train weakened by the hunger strike, we ran weakened to the police who rushed at the same station against our reception, and we already felt weakened the spirit of the strikes in Vitoria-Gasteiz under the vedaval of the “democratic” delegation: everything was changing so that nothing would change.

The idea of sharing selectively emerged from the complicity built in Carabanchel's forced coexistence. Together with Karmen and Bego, our co-worker of life, they were then just vultures with Ana, Javi, Maite and Zigor. The effort to live in common; projects, loves, parentalities or to share children beyond the biological family. “We are brothers of sisters, but of different lives”: remember that explanation to the professor desolate, compete? That attempt did not go far enough, it brought us pain and joy, but it was enriching.

How to forget that text of María Mies that in the 1980s shook our center of pride and conviction: “It is the white man, thanks to exploitation and the war against nature, women and the third world.” That's how we jumped, you first and I behind, the Gasteiztars in the antimilitarist group. Together with many others who for decades woven complicity, we knew how to manage hatred against this system of death in the most constructive way possible, without giving up the dream of killing it.

In the midst of the decadence we felt here, the fire of a newborn star made us illusion there, in Chiapas. In the early 2000s, we flew the ocean together, and on those lands we found traces of our past struggles: nobody over anyone; we ordered obedience. We accept the function of a human shield that they proposed to us “taking advantage” of the fact that the lives of Europeans, unlike the lives of indigenous people, are worth something in the eyes of the military and the authorities. We met the cruelty of injustice again. Do you remember how it hit us to know that children were not given names to forget them, because most of them died before that age? Do you remember that women added a few drops of brandy to the last bottle of the afternoon so they didn't wake up at night, because they didn't have to feed him? We ended our stay in Chiapas by surprise at the death of your brother Manolo.

And who was going to tell us that once we retired, we were going to make a small mountain group, first with Olegaria and "Sparks," then with many others, keeping the weekly exit for years, which has so much conversation, reflection, friendship and passion.

Do you remember the visits we made to Josu Ormaetxea and Patxi Cabello in Granada prison? And on the return of one of them, your stay in Marinaleda and your occupied and cooperative lands? What about Friday's concentrations in Vitoria-Gasteiz in favour of prisoners?

Jesus, all that long journey would not be possible without you, without your company and without your company. I am happy to thank you and acknowledge that each one takes its own steps always accompanied by others.

Jesus, companion of company, companion of company, companion of struggle and life. The struggle crossed our paths a long time ago, we have stayed close during these years, we will continue to walk together.