Mattin Troitiño was born on September 9, 1984 in San Sebastián. His father, Txomin Troitiño, his uncle Antton and his brother Jon are in prison. His uncle was arrested in January 1987 and his father in September. My brother, six years ago: “My father was arrested on September 3, 1987, about to be three years old... I don’t remember, of course.” His mother’s family is San Sebastian. Grandmother with her father from Palencia (Spain): “Tariego de Cerrato, small town...”. His grandfather, a Galician, was a Navy soldier. Fighting for Franco. The Francoist. They had nine children: “Even though they belonged to ETA, his grandfather respected his father and uncle until his death. My grandmother lives with the hope that she will see her children

free.” Someone who lives in Mattin's situation knows facts that are hard to explain: “I’ve lived the image of the prison since I was a child, it’s the image I’ve kept. It has been a ‘normal’ process or I live it. I have incorporated the prison as a process of assimilation into education: prisons, prisoners, visits, attitudes of officials... All this has ‘touched’ me since I was a child. I am a person who lives outside of prison.” We can

usually imagine special relationships with the person in prison. Here is the case of Mattin: “It’s hard to meet a person who’s been a prisoner almost always, and if he’s your father, think about it. Prison is a special world, it’s limited, it’s a huge obstacle. Relationships with the father are not comparable to relationships between other fathers and sons, they are different. I've always loved my father that way. Even though we are far away, we have cultivated a good relationship.” His father is in A Coruña, in the Curtis prison. He's 55 years old and he's been inside 23... “Spending 23 years in jail is not tender, neither for him nor for those around us.” Mattin

says that his father and his uncle look alike, “but they are very different in how they deal with things. No one was surprised when his uncle was arrested, while no one expected his father to be arrested, no one. In first relationships, the father is more serious than the uncle, the uncle is more open.” The guy's in Huelva II.
It was harder than his father and uncle to see his brother in prison: “I’m 26 years old and was jailed when I was 20. I was well aware that my brother would also join the ETA organization, but I spent many years living with him. My brother was ‘robbed’. At the time of his arrest, he had been on the run for four years. It’s not easy to accept it, you don’t want it to touch you.” His brother also took the path of his father – and his uncle: “Since you’ve already ‘known’ the prison, it’s even harder to accept it. My brother showed me an even sharper side of reality.” Brother Jon was extradited from France three months ago. He was in Fresnes, later in Marseille prison, and then in Toulon. He is 31 years old and is currently in Foncalant, Alicante.

Travel and visits

Prison and anguish are words that are similar in Mattin’s vocabulary: “Prison is a space that squeezes you. Doors, officials, closures, crystals, smell... The prison has many qualities, the anguish brings coldness. Although sometimes, in contrast, you also feel the warmth, the warmth that you find in the relatives of
the prisoners.” He says his father is a strong character, “but when you spend twenty long years in prison, like many others, something moves inside you. In addition to the burden that accumulates in the day to day, it is a great coincidence of twenty years. Because of the way you are, your father fills the time with ease. His head's fine. He is a painter, he plays sports, he has cultivated a prosperous relationship with people from outside through letters. He is the master of the external reality, which helps him to overcome the internal situation.” My
father and my uncle have a lot of people around them who help them. They have many visits and quick social support from their friends: “I know the other situations, of prisoners with a more restricted social environment. All the things that are left behind by the family. In that sense, I am not complaining. Of course, three family members, the economic expense is enormous.”

Economic expenditure, time and risk on the roads: “I have never wanted to know how many miles I have traveled. Asal, if I was someone else, but I was born with it and I don’t live it as a ‘singularity’. I have traveled many miles to see my father, my uncle and my brother, many.” They go to Curtis by car, they do not have access to the bus, since the number of prisoners present is small. The purpose of the prison is to place difficulties due to dispersion or otherwise. The voyages to see the prisoners have grown into thousands. Mattin remembers the time when he was traveling to Granada, the environment where he was on the bus. He met different people and realities: “I have a fixation: to see mothers and children together. I've got the image stuck in my head. I put my mother in the skin of those mothers, and the child is me. It’s hard for me to see my childhood after 20 years...” He also has in

mind the narrative of the Salto del Negro prison in the Canary Islands. Third World prison. A reflection of the lack of humanity. Txomin Troitiño was there during the years 1989-90, during the dispersion: “The situation was very tough and we went once a year. By plane, on two flights: From Bilbao to Madrid and from there to the Islands. Two days and back. It was a huge waste of money and
time.” Three years ago, his father went to Granada to visit him and they did terrible harm to him, his little brother Oier and his mother: “He was a year old. The gift was that his brother was face-to-face with his father [Oier has identified Mattin’s father as his uncle. They have the same mother, but he has the other father]: “Oier had to go in with the Family Book, because he didn’t have the card. The officials didn’t let it go, they didn’t have any flexibility. It wasn't the first time. It was in the database, identifying if they had it. They also had a photo. They acted like robots, they wouldn't let him in. Robots are the same.”

He's doing it in Etxerat.

Mattin works at Etxerat: “The only recommendation my father gave me was to ‘know the responsibility well and fulfill it.’ Because there is so much suffering in the community and in the families. He hasn’t said anything else since.” “You

know,” continues Mattin, “in hard times we are asked how we are, and often we only know how to say ‘well’. We have a mistake in that. I am aware that my father is a prisoner, that he has no freedom, that he has many rights violated, that the day to day is becoming a burden and he knows that, unfortunately, it is a reality that I have lived since I was a child. This does not mean that it is not a burden, there is mutual understanding, empathy. During the visits we speak few words at times, they are small comments, we do not have such long speeches. The details that are present in the hard moments help us to move forward. We help each other.”

Ursoa, Jon and Unai Parot

Ursoa Parot was born in the Algerian province of Sidi-bel-Abbes, he is 55 years old. Jon Parot was born in Algeria, he is 58 years old. Unai Parot, in the capital of Algiers, is 52 years old. They're siblings. The two brothers are in prison: “They have tried to associate Unai with Al Qaeda on several occasions, claiming that the Paros are Arabs.” The Urso's father was a Zubero. Mother of Navarrese origin: “My parents met at the Euskal Etxea in Alje, the capital. At the time of our birth the Basque Houses of Algeria, Morocco and Tunisia were very popular in the world. The Parot family, on their father's side, is from Muskildi. Casa Parotüa is located in Garindain. It was my Amatxi Ühalt, from Muenster.”

His father, Ambrox Parot Ühalt, was born in 1917 as the youngest of twelve brooches. The family moved inevitably to Bordeaux. He lost his brother, Euskara. He had received an education in the House of the Sewers of Bordeaux: “The others had no education, my father did. My father lost the Basque language, but he kept the Basque

conscience alert.” Ambrox Parot participated in World War II: “The Germans took him prisoner twice and fled on both occasions. Others agreed to live under German rule, to occupy their farm. My father entered the resistance. After the war he was assigned to Algeria as a teacher. It was the rhyme of the French Public School,” Ursoa tells us.

It was the time of colonized Algeria. The French were forced to flee there. The mother of Urso, Antonia, traveled to Algeria from the Andalusian village of Lorca, of Navarrese origin. He worked at the post office. Mother and father met each other there: “We were born in Algeria, but my father gave us the names of Jon, Unai and Ursoa. They didn’t accept it because it was forbidden.”

His mother’s family arrived in Algeria during the Spanish Civil War. Urso’s grandparents were born in the early Catholic era of Franco. His mother, who was the youngest in the family, was also able to study. The refugees were supported by: “Our grandparents were Catholics, but the door to their home was always open to Republican, anarchist or communist refugees. They were not reactionary Catholics. They were hardworking labourers. We, as children, have lived the world of refugees in a natural way. On my mother’s side we received a communal culture, more communal than my father’s. The culture on his father’s side, Zubero-American, was more individualistic. My father was different in that sense.”

the Algerian War of Independence

When the Algerian War of Independence broke out, the Parot family lived there. In 1962, the Pieds-Noirs returned, the Parot family a year earlier: “My father publicly denounced that the Algerians were denied the right to vote. Look, he was threatened because he was a Democrat. The attitudes of the father and mother were very evident in this society. Our family was not a colonizer. Envy, denunciation and threats forced the father and mother out of there.”

Birds of Orhi Want to Orhi

“My father wanted to return to Mueşrüküra and become a teacher. It was his vocation. He wanted to return to the Basque Country, but they did not guarantee him the place of Rienta. There were no places in the country of origin. He suffered a terrible nervous breakdown.” The Paros who lived in Toulouse (Occitania): “We used to go on vacation. It was the last period of Francoism. My father read a lot and reported news of the repression in the family. When I was 14, Unai wrote a book in school and I remember working on the subject of torture.” In

1975 the Parot family moved from Toulouse to Bayonne. The teachers here took Parot's rhyme as a Pied-Noir: “The Parot family made us feel like foreigners, we said we robbed the locals of their jobs. We were discriminated against. Alta, my father was talking about the Basque Country. It’s not about politics, it’s about people and culture.” At

the age of twenty, Ursoa remembers how Batallon Vasco-Español wounded his brother Jon: “Etxabe in the bar; Pannecau Street in Bayonne”. He also remembers the time when his father was in retreat: “The parents moved in a refugee environment. My father gave French classes free of charge to the children of the refugees. My father died in 2002. The Algerian students came to his funeral, he was a very dear man,” says Ursoa. She lives her mother.

Aggrieved by the Paros

When Unai and Jon were arrested, the media spread horrific images about them, spreading the lava. Ursoa explains the impression they received from his family, who lived in Paris: “They called us saying that they would both be put to death in France. Their parents thought they were in the patriotic world, but they didn’t think they were so involved. The parents were unaware of their siblings’ involvement. The image they disseminated could not be associated with the images that the media provided. The contrast was amazing.” His

father could not see Unai for the first seven years, he was forbidden: “Unai was tortured for five days and five nights. Later, when he was in Herrera de la Mancha (Spain), the police tried to blackmail him. He was threatened and threatened.” He is currently in prison III of El Puerto de Santa María. After Jon had returned to several prisons in Paris, he was transferred to Toulouse: “My mother, who is 83 years old, made three trips every month during the first years of prison: One to Unai and two to Jon. Unai needed a lot of help because of the torture. My parents were in a very difficult situation.”

The Parot Doctrine

Unai did not like the fact that he was in the press every day through the denomination of Parot doctrine. It's the doctrine of the Supreme Court. Even without the Parot doctrine, Unai was quite popular: “Unai doesn’t like to hear his last name every time a prisoner is grieved, it’s hard. I think it would be harder for me to forget.”

The Urso is a widow and has no children. It's 2,400 km. He spent a month visiting his brothers. Unai, who had his own regime, was not allowed to visit him on the same day as the other prisoners, and the family had always been separated. They had not been able to take the bus for a long time. And sometimes, you go with your mother or your nieces and... “We went to visit Unai, we arrived in Madrid and we saw that the Civil Guard took him in the van.” Spanish prisons are unsustainable, inhumane and inhuman.

Unai has daughters Haizea and Oihana, aged 25 and 22. He has another daughter with his second wife: Star, 12 years old. He's also a grandfather. The jungle has a daughter named Kima. The daughter of Jon is Ihitza: “Since they were arrested, I have essentially been the mother of Unai’s daughters.” The first daughter saw her father for the first time at the age of seven on the other side of the bars and crystals: “The wind thinks of huge holes. The wind, Selva and Ihitza remember Unai as seen on a broken TV. They remember it on the other side of the dirty crystals, with microphones that didn’t work to talk. We can't understand each other. When she was imprisoned, Unai was a mother to her daughters, she took care of them a lot.” Fortunately, Ursoa says that Ihitza does not live this experience. “The wind and the jungle have a hole in their memory. The situation in France is tough, but the Spanish prison has been tougher for our family.”

Unai Parot of Al Qaeda

The Spanish Interior Minister Antoni Asunción described Unai as the organizer of the prison’s bikes. He was isolated while in El Puerto de Santa María. All the Basque prisoners were left on one side and he alone on the other. The mother remembers what she said: “My mother followed Unai’s situation closely. He was beheaded by a social prisoner in front of his cell. In Puerto I, the bands of prisoners work against each other. They wanted to blackmail several social prisoners to kill Unai himself and another Basque prisoner.” Unai, however, has a calm temperament and has been well acquainted with social prisoners. The Puerto Rican newspapers have expanded Unai’s “Arab character” since he is there: “The newspapers once reported that Unai’s surname was found on the agenda of an al-Qaeda member. In 2007, while in prison in Madrid, an Islamic was imprisoned beside him. In the courtyard and hallways they recorded images and manipulated them while I was with the Islamic. At the trials, they ask, ‘Don’t you speak Arabic?’ That’s where they found out that he had a relationship

with the Arabs.” Ursoa works in the French administration in the housing department. In his spare time he does translation work in Le Journal: “My vocation is languages, it is the patrimony of my father. I am the one who has gone unnoticed in the family, but the brothers say that I am one of the fingers of their hands.”